toms

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Permalink Reply by Paul Wyman on September 3, 2009 at 7:28am

Ditto! I grew all mine in the greenhouse this year and they have been great.

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Permalink Reply by Gary on September 5, 2009 at 6:36pm

Glad to hear some of you had a good year for toms, Mine.... well they started off well enough but our allotment got blight early on when we had that rather damp spell. Having said that, I decided to not water them at all after that and I still managed to pick over 31 kilos of the things. All were varieties that we tried from the supermarket and liked so thought we'd give them a go.

I'll post a recipe for a very simple tomato sauce later if anyone is interested.

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Permalink Reply by charlie keane on September 5, 2009 at 8:31pm

Hi gary i would like to have that recipe if poss.... chas

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Permalink Reply by Gary on September 6, 2009 at 9:27am

Ok Charlie, I've posted the recipe in the groups section for you all.

Cheers Gaz.

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Permalink Reply by charlie keane on September 8, 2009 at 9:09pm

Hi gaz have made your recipe today (YUMMY)...CHAS

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Permalink Reply by Gaelle on September 28, 2009 at 9:31am

I'm pleased you lot had success ! A few of mine got blight but some are left which appear sound, but still green. Should I leave them in the hope that they grow/ripen more, or is there no hope now and should I pick them and ripen them in a paper bag with a banana (as suggested in the Dig In newsletter) ?

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Permalink Reply by Gary on September 29, 2009 at 5:27pm

Hi Gaelle,

Firstly i'd stop watering them altogether, for some reason it seems to stem the flow of blight. Then If you have quite large tomatoes and serious blight issues then I'd take all of the tomatoes off the plants and make chutneys with them, pull the plants up and burn them as I doubt you could get them ripe on the vine this late in the year. If you have lots of cherry tomatoes then i'd leave them on the vine unless they all start turning black. I've had blight on mine since mid July but still had a fabulous crop of around 40 kilos on 15 plants.

Another trick for forcing your tomatoes is to remove most of the bottom foliage to force all the plants energy into making and ripening the fruit. Using this method I was at least 3 week ahead of anyone on my allotment on picking my first toms this year. Another advantage of this is that there is less surface area on the vine for the infection to spread.

Gaz.

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