2:33pm Monday 22nd March 2010
ASK any budding gardener which crops he would try to grow first and I guarantee that tomatoes would be among the top answers.
They not only look and taste infinitely better than shop-bought ones but there are so many varieties from which to choose that even if you only have a hanging basket you can plant a cascading type which will give you dozens of sweet, cherry tomatoes.
However, many beginners can end up disappointed, because their tomatoes either suffer blossom end rot or are decimated by blight, where the stem and the fruits end up with brown blotches and become inedible, particularly in wet, windy summers.
To produce healthy, delicious tomatoes you should follow a tried and tested regime.
This includes watering the soil or compost daily to ensure it never dries out.
Pay attention to plants grown in containers, as irregular watering causes nutritional imbalance.
For tomatoes grown in pots and bags, watering by itself won’t be enough to ensure healthy growth. Feed the plants weekly with a high-potash fertiliser, increasing the frequency as the plants grow larger or if leaves show signs of discolouring.
Most tomatoes need canes for support. Different types will require different training. For example bush tomatoes will need little, if any, training. However, most other tomatoes are trained as single stems, or cordons, and the main shoot needs to be tied upright to a cane or support.
Outdoor cordon tomatoes will usually form three or four trusses of fruits during the season. Pinch off the tip of the main shoot a leaf or two above the fourth flower truss. You can leave greenhouse plants to grow on. Warm, humid weather provides the perfect conditions for blight disease which attacks tomatoes and potatoes. This fungus disease spreads rapidly via airborne spores when conditions are right. Keep an eye on the weather and, if these conditions occur, use a preventive fungicide spray, such as Sitahen 945, straight away to stop the blight spores infecting your plants.
The greenhouse is the obvious place to grow tomatoes as you can give them a longer season and are likely to get bigger crops than if you grow them outdoors.
Indoor tomatoes can be sown in March in a heated propagator set to a minimum of 15C, but preferably a little higher.
Outdoor tomatoes should be started off indoors eight or nine weeks before it’s safe to plant outdoors in your area. In colder areas, wait until April.
Two years ago, during the wet summer (which is the sort of weather tomatoes hate) a magazine held a trial of container-grown tomatoes to discover which performed best. The overall top choice was Apero F1, a rich, red cherry tomato with a slightly elongated shape, followed by Tomatoberry F1, which produced an abundance of delicious, strawberry-shaped fruits on trailing trusses.
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