2016 Tomato Growing

I'm limiting what I'm growing this year because I don't know if and when my house move is ever going to happen but fingers crossed.

I'm growing some yellow pear shaped tomatoes (sorry I don't know the name) that another member has kindly sent me. It'll be interesting to follow their progress.

I'll also be growing Ailsa Craig for the first time. I was weighing these up against Alicante and couldn't find much between the two, so I let the name sway me as an omen, be it good or bad. Okay, now you can tell me I've dropped a clanger!

Both from seed of course in early March, started in an electric propagator and then greenhouse grown.

 

Thanks John, that's an encouraging start.

 

Although I no longer have a "growing" garden, I've been given a greenhouse, so my giant tomatoes will be back on the agenda, Big Zac and a couple of others.

 

For a bit of fun, any day now I'll be sowing some mini-bush toms for very early indoor cropping, but my first serious sowing of early Red Alerts wont be until the last week in February, followed by Beefsteak/Giant toms (needing long time to crop) first week in March, everything else (including some more Red Alerts) gets sown late March after the greenhouse heating goes on and I can free up some room indoors.

They all get started off in propagators inside a big indoor lightbox. I also erect a second even bigger one in my daughter's room on a 1.8 x 0.6m folding table with a demountable box on top whilst she's at uni, removing it just before she returns for Easter hols (shhhhhh!!!! don't tell her!) when the greenhouse heating goes on and everything (including the second lot of lights)moves into there, then into tunnels in May.

Got some new F1 varieties to try this year that were very cheap from T&M, also got some very expensive seeds for the heaviest tomato class. My second 3 x 10m polytunnel will also be used almost exclusively for tomatoes, plus outdoor toms in open ground at my plot, early sown pot grown (Morrisons flower pots) Red Alerts kept in tunnels until June then evicted to crop outdoors, and various small bush toms in containers in my garden.

 

Ferline, golden pearl, tumbling tom red, and gigagtomo for a laugh. No greenhouse so will have to be " creative " ?

 

Golden Pearl are my favourite tomatoes Wee Tam but I'm not growing them this year. Not to be confused with Garden Pearl of course.

 

Me too - but I am going to try growing on some of the suckers this year to see if theres any advantage to that over starting a succession of plants from scratch.

 

This year I finally want to get around to trying some Xpollination.

They should produce flowers quicker than seed sown plants (based on mine & other's experiences), and they are free (my favourite price). I've bought some very special tomato seeds for a ridiculously stupid high price to grow this year, so will be taking side shoots from it to produce extra plants = extra tomatoes for seed saving, another advantage.

 

I have started beefsteak tomato seeds and am anxiously awaiting my seed order to arrive that includes a greenhouse variety which looks similar to what we call a vine tomato. I'm hoping the cost, 75p each seed, is going to assure me of a good experience.