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Afternoon all
Last year we had a conflab on here about what would happen if you just left your vine tomatoes to it. There was a lot of umming and aahing and I believe I was informed in no uncertain terms that if you left the armpits [sideshoots] intact, then the plants would definitely fruit less than if you took them out.
So, as you do - I tried it this year.
I planted 4 plants in a row, and left them to it.
The plants were:
1 Piglet Willie's French Black
1 Falcon [the yellow one, I had thought it was Galina but the label was definitely Falcon today]
1 Franchi Red Pear
1 Purple Russian
These were not prized plants, they really were end of the line, nobody picked them when I took them to give them away [I believe they were taken to the meeting with the gang in Yorkshire and neither Ginger, Sarz nor Dave took them away] and they were also left in the car and got a tad thirsty that week. I bunged them in at the end of a session of gardening, mulched with grass clippings and that was it.
I did cloche them for a few weeks, but they soon outgrew the cloche.
When I went back after the summer, they had gone a little mental. They rambled and were really dense and covered a good meter and a half squareish area; a few stems had grown up and the weight had dragged the stem back down; and in many places the plant had rooted from the stem [as I found out today when I pulled them up].
I've been taking trugloads of tomatoes back home each week, and on 3 occasions have mixed them with some of mine and made passata to freeze; and today I harvested half the rest [they were showing signs of blight and I don't want to have blighty toms to deal with next week] and what I brought home today is in the pic below.
This has quite categorically been the bestest amount of tomatoes from 4 plants I have ever known. I could have filled the trug today but I just haven't got the space to let them all ripen at home; so I left loads. All 4 plants performed, the Franchi ones were the last to ripen out of all 4 but by 'eck they are good tomatoes! The PWFBs were the first to ripen, and the Purple Russians were absolutely amazing - ripening up and bursting with juice. And the Falcons were so hard to get off without squishing them as they were so juicy.
I had thought these were armpits themselves, but I don't put the date on sideshoot labels and when I saw the dates on the labels, it came flooding back to me that these were the ones that I left in the car and shoved in after the meet-up.
I am SO doing this again. It's brilliant and with a cloche I might well not have had any blight on these at all. The peg is there for scale. Now, where's my big pan?
p.s....I didn't know there were only 4 until I cut them back and counted; 4 plants, and 4 labels. I thought they were armpits because I honestly thought there were about 12 plants in there and as they were all the same varieties, assumed that I had taken a few armpits from 4 different varieties; I was gobsmacked when there were just 4 and the labels had dates on them.
Last year we had a conflab on here about what would happen if you just left your vine tomatoes to it. There was a lot of umming and aahing and I believe I was informed in no uncertain terms that if you left the armpits [sideshoots] intact, then the plants would definitely fruit less than if you took them out.
So, as you do - I tried it this year.
I planted 4 plants in a row, and left them to it.
The plants were:
1 Piglet Willie's French Black
1 Falcon [the yellow one, I had thought it was Galina but the label was definitely Falcon today]
1 Franchi Red Pear
1 Purple Russian
These were not prized plants, they really were end of the line, nobody picked them when I took them to give them away [I believe they were taken to the meeting with the gang in Yorkshire and neither Ginger, Sarz nor Dave took them away] and they were also left in the car and got a tad thirsty that week. I bunged them in at the end of a session of gardening, mulched with grass clippings and that was it.
I did cloche them for a few weeks, but they soon outgrew the cloche.
When I went back after the summer, they had gone a little mental. They rambled and were really dense and covered a good meter and a half squareish area; a few stems had grown up and the weight had dragged the stem back down; and in many places the plant had rooted from the stem [as I found out today when I pulled them up].
I've been taking trugloads of tomatoes back home each week, and on 3 occasions have mixed them with some of mine and made passata to freeze; and today I harvested half the rest [they were showing signs of blight and I don't want to have blighty toms to deal with next week] and what I brought home today is in the pic below.
This has quite categorically been the bestest amount of tomatoes from 4 plants I have ever known. I could have filled the trug today but I just haven't got the space to let them all ripen at home; so I left loads. All 4 plants performed, the Franchi ones were the last to ripen out of all 4 but by 'eck they are good tomatoes! The PWFBs were the first to ripen, and the Purple Russians were absolutely amazing - ripening up and bursting with juice. And the Falcons were so hard to get off without squishing them as they were so juicy.
I had thought these were armpits themselves, but I don't put the date on sideshoot labels and when I saw the dates on the labels, it came flooding back to me that these were the ones that I left in the car and shoved in after the meet-up.
I am SO doing this again. It's brilliant and with a cloche I might well not have had any blight on these at all. The peg is there for scale. Now, where's my big pan?
p.s....I didn't know there were only 4 until I cut them back and counted; 4 plants, and 4 labels. I thought they were armpits because I honestly thought there were about 12 plants in there and as they were all the same varieties, assumed that I had taken a few armpits from 4 different varieties; I was gobsmacked when there were just 4 and the labels had dates on them.
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