14:15 - 07 July 2010
Most greenhouse gardeners grow tomatoes. There’s a good reason for this, it’s because the flavour of homegrown tomatoes completely surpasses anything you can buy in the shops even if you buy organic.
Picking your own homegrown tomatoes straight from the plant and eating them immediately is just one of the rewards of growing your own.
If you choose to grow your tomatoes organically you not only benefit from the additional health benefits but you can save yourself a fortune in the shops.
Growing tomatoes isn’t the easiest pastime, but with a little care and attention, a certain amount of good weather and maybe a little luck you can be harvesting your tomatoes well into the autumn and may even have some for a Christmas dish or two too.
Flowers and trusses
Tomato plants carry short side stems of flowers; these are called trusses. The flowers need to be pollinated either by insects, or if they are in a greenhouse, you may need to pollinate the early flowers by hand. Do this with a paintbrush or even your fingers, brushing pollen from one flower and transferring it to the next. The truss has set when you can see tiny green balls of immature tomatoes in place of the flowers. These will swell, ripen and mature into tomatoes.
Only allow four or five trusses to set on outdoor tomatoes; anymore are unlikely to ripen outside before the first frosts.
Tips and advice
Tie in and support tomato plants as they develop, especially as fruit starts to swell or they will quickly topple over and be damaged.
Don’t allow tomato plants to dry out. Stress, inconsistent watering and a lack of calcium can lead to split fruits and Blossom End Rot.
For cordon tomatoes pinch out the side shoots before they develop. If they are quite large then root them into a pot of multi-purpose compost and grow them into new plants.
When the first truss of fruits has set you need to provide more nutrients to support growth. Choose a dedicated tomato food that will deliver all the necessary nutrients and trace elements to encourage strong healthy plants and a good crop of fruit.
Tomatoes have very specific requirements when it comes to nutrition, so choose a high-performance fertiliser tailored to their needs. Choose a dedicated tomato food that contains high levels of nitrogen and potassium for crops that are unbeatable in terms of flavour whether they are grown in the soil or in the growing bags. Make sure the product you choose also includes trace elements to promote and sustain healthy plants and significantly reduces the risk of blossom end rot, a common disease of tomatoes.
When tomato plants have five trusses of fruit developing, pinch out the tip of the plant to divert energy into these fruits.
Remove any yellowing leaves from the base of your tomato plants. This allows more light in to ripen the fruit. Do not remove leaves above developing or ripening fruit trusses.
If whitefly are a problem around your tomatoes then grow some French Marigolds alongside, these deter whitefly and reduce the need for pesticides.
If you want to speed up the ripening process of green tomatoes then hang banana skins among the fruit. These emit ethylene, a natural ripening catalyst.
Blight
Tomato blight is a particular problem in wet and windy seasons and spreads rapidly through outdoor crops. It can also affect indoor tomatoes if the outbreak is particularly virulent. For the best results choose to grow varieties that show some resistance to the disease such as ‘Ferline’.
If you start to see brown blotches spreading on the leaves of your tomatoes then remove the leaves and destroy them. This will slow the spread of the disease but will not cure the problem. Where possible harvest and use the tomatoes on affected plants before the blight takes hold.
