Outdoor tomato development in July

[bethduckie]

I have several outdoor tomato plants, ranging from big beef tomatoes to smaller to cherry types, and whilst I seem to have a lot of foliage, (and indeed flowers) I don't have much in the way of developing tomatoes.

Is this normal for July? How far are yours on? I'm sure last year we were eating them by the start of August. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to go out there and fertilise the flowers by hand do you think, or 'stop' the plants, or what?

[Flummery]

Tomatoes don't need hand pollination. Outdoor toms are rarely as prolific and those kept under glass but I have been harvesting from my outdoor ones for a few weeks now. Mind you, they were sown very early and mollycoddled! Are you giving them a specific tomato feed or just a general one? They really need the potash which helps with fruit. To set the flowers, tap the plant stems - that's enough to ensure the flowers are fertilised.

Good luck with them.

[reetnproper]

My outside Cherry toms have only just got small green balls growing from the spent flowers and the largest is probably the size of say a good sized grape. As Flummery says, the outside plants rarely do as well as the indoor ones in terms of numbers of fruit and, in my experience, are always several weeks behind the greenhouse ones.

I have only just started picking from the indoor plants and so wouldn't expect my outdoor ones to be ready until Mid August at the very earliest, even though they were all sown at the same time.

Reet
x

[bethduckie]

Ah, OK I will go tap them.

They are in proper tomato growbags, two to a bag, and being fed with tomato food every two weeks

Last year I grew them in bog standard cheapy growbags, three to a bag, hardly fed them, watered erratically and generally neglected them... and they went bonkers!

You can't win eh?

[taff]

it was very sunny last year....not so much this year.

You could up the feed to once a week...

[bethduckie]

That's true. I hadn't thought of the sunshine. Last July was sunny.

Plants have been duly tapped, anyway. Hopefully all those flowers will start turning into fruits soon. There are a lot of flowers, I must say.

[Thelma Sanders]

I have fruit set, but they are very slow to ripen this year.....they could do with a bit more warmth!
It's not been very warm or sunny here lately, we even had an overnight low of 9 few days ago

[Germinater]

I have found this year a gentile shake of the canes supporting them has really helped the flowers to set fruit a lot quicker .this year I already have about five trusses of set fruit on most of the outdoor toms with the gh toms a little behind as they were taken as cuttings but are bigger than outeys already just a little slow to send out flowers also have been removing leafs to get as much sun light on the set trusses to help ripen them .should have toms in the next week or two..hope this helps ..

[hamsterhead]

Although watering and feeding the roots on a regular basis, I too am not getting much fruit appearing at the moment, maybe I'm just being impatient. What I have got is that a couple of the plants, supposedly the beef tomatoes, have brown curled up leaves. I reckon this is to do with the inconsistencies of the weather and that its been cold at night. Having said that, my potatoes are almost five feet high, some with flowers and some not. Oh the joys, ecstasies, wonderment, excitment, sadness and disappointed of gardening but of course, we'll all do it again next year

[Potstubsdustbins]

I gave up tryimg to grow beef type toms outdoors the weather never seemed to work for me.

As for cherries my outdoor Tumbler harvest started about 2 weeks ago and we now have full production, SWMBO froze the first couple of pounds yesterday.

I would certainly up your feeding levels. My indoor Sungold get fed every other watering whilst the tumblers get fed twice a week.

Colin

[Two_Sheds]

I don't grow outdoor toms any more, they always get blight before they ripen.

My gh ones produced a pound and a half of fruit last week, but they're now very slow (it's been cloudy, cool & wet for a good few days)

[briggsy2011]

Hi My toms are slow to start (i have one very small fruit - size of a small finger nail) I have 8 plants - 3 are very bushy and large. I do have flowers on them. I have had them in the garden since hardening them off so will it be to late to put them in the gh to help them along? but it is unheated.

thanks x

[Potstubsdustbins]

Briggsy,

I assume you have your toms in pots, if this is the case then yes a spell in the GH will help unheated or not. Don't forget that if you go down this route there may be an issue should you decide to return them to the outside world.

Colin