Tomatoes are a real worthwhile crop to grow and with the wealth of varieties on offer there are tomatoes suitable for everyone, for every location.
Tomatoes have been bred constantly for many generations, breeders looking for bigger fruit, better growth, disease resistance, colours, low growing, tall growing you name it there is a variety on offer!
In my opinion the most exciting varieties are available from seed, but the downside is that the time for sowing Tomatoes from seed was 2 months ago.
As a result if you’re thinking of producing a tomato crop for this year – don’t be sowing seed, get down to your local garden centre and pick up a few plants.
Depending on how ‘exciting’ your garden centre is you may be offered just a few varieties, or they may have 10+ varieties for you to choose from. The varieties on offer may range from regular sized tomatoes to the big Beefsteak varieties down to the cherry types, and the colours may range from yellow to red to orange to black.
Also you may find some of the dwarf types, such as Garden Pearl, which is an excellent variety for pots, hanging baskets and containers – outside of the polytunnel.
In general tomatoes adore a sunny location, within a protected structure such as a Polytunnel or Glasshouse is ideal, as this offers maximum light concentrations and a more stable temperature. Some of the varieties, such as Totem and Garden Pearl (the dwarf types) do really well outside in Pots – aslong as they are positioned in a sunny location – away from cold winds.
I grow the vast majority of my own tomatoes in buckets and big pots so that I don’t have to worry about crop rotation as when I’m finished with the crop I just empty the contents of the buckets around the plants in the garden. Where if I was to plant the tomatoes into the soil I would have to operate a 4 year crop rotation to reduce pest and disease pressure.
Tomatoes love good soil, they like to be planted into good rich compost at the start, and then start feeding every fortnight once the first flowers fall off, your feeding should be consistent and then increase the frequency of feeding as you increase your watering frequency, building up to feeding every third watering.
The reason we increase our feeding inline with increased watering is that as we water you’ll get a certain amount of nutrient loss via runoff.
Watering is vital with Tomatoes, keeping them nice and moist and never letting them dry out – especially when they’re in fruit is vital. Inconsistent watering leads to black circles developing on the bottom of the fruits, a cultural problem called Blossom End Rot.
Also vital is the management of the temperature in the glasshouse, keeping a max temp of around 25-30C is ideal, too much and too intense and you’ll get another cultural problem called Leaf Curl develop.
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