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| "Ferline" |
Most of the plants are absolutely laden with flowers.
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| "Giant Delicious" |
And of course, flowers lead to fruits (as long as pollination takes place). Thank you, bees!
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| "Ferline" |
These ones are "Possena del Vesuvio", grown from seeds sent to me by Enrico, in Italy. you can see that they are going to be plum-shaped ones.
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| "Possena del Vesuvio" |
These are "Larisa", grown from seeds sent to me by Facebook friend Eddy, in Belgium.
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| "Larisa" |
My favourite cherry tomato these days is "Maskotka" - a very vigorous and unruly plant. It does well grown as a bush in big containers, where it produces a veritable jungle of growth.
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| "Maskotka" |
Here is a close-up of the rapidly-swelling Maskotka fruits. They usually get quite big - bigger than most cherry tomato types, but smaller than the "regular" types.
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| "Maskotka" |
In the hot weather we had last week, the tomatoes grew rapidly. I had to tie them in to their canes twice within a week! I normally tie the stems every 6 or 8 inches, to keep them straight. Watering has been made a lot easier since I got the "self-watering" pots with the reservoirs in their bases. I only need to water the tomatoes about once a week, which is convenient because that fits in nicely with the feeding regime. I feed my tomatoes once a week, using a proprietary food called "Tomorite", which has the best NPK balance for this type of fruit.
Many of my tomatoes this year are large "Beefsteak" varieties. I am planning to be very disciplined and to stop the plants when they have produced a maximum of 5 trusses (maybe only four for the biggest ones). I will also thin out the fruit to leave only 3 or 4 fruit per truss. This means I will hopefully get fewer, but bigger and better fruits. In my garden, quality comes before quantity!
How awful that you've got a contaminated compost issue again. I do hope it doesn't affect the fruit and that you go on to harvest a wonderful tomato crop.
ReplyDeleteI hope you do go on & harvest a great tomato crop this year. The ones above are looking healthy.
ReplyDeleteYour tomatoes look to be well on their way. Mine have also made big leaps in the last couple of weeks - I use twine to support them, in addition to a sort of modified California weave method. I had better get out there and do some more weaving today.
ReplyDeleteI hope those tomatoes do well after the problems you had last year. You deserve to have some really nice fruit.
ReplyDeleteYour tomatoes look wonderful! I need to look into those self watering pots.
ReplyDeleteTomatoes don't need bees, they are self pollinators and need vibration (like bee buzzing) to shake the pollen down. I give my tomato cages a good shake every day or at least tap the stems. Some people use vibrating tools such as an electric toothbrush to do the job.
ReplyDeleteThey look to be doing rather well Mark, I noticed one of my bush tom plants start to turn ripe before I came away for a few days. My toms get a head-start though in the protected lean to. I've left Jan in charge of monitoring!
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