Tags
cats are easier to care for than houseplants, great tomato suicide, green and growing things, I am not good with plants, tomato plants
I need your help…
I’m not very good with plants as a general rule. They don’t tell you when they’re hungry or thirsty and they get strange beasties and diseases that require a long time to get better.
But we bought a tomato plant, which I love dearly and want to prosper. Growing up in the States I never really thought about tomatoes needing much care. The summer was hot, you got tomatoes, end of story. There was even the Great Tomato Suicide one summer when we went on holiday for two weeks and came back to 6 foot high plants surrounded by the internal gubbins of all the over-ripe tomatoes who had leapt to their death. It was a little scary…
Now we have these tiny tomatoes I want them to be happy… I think I need to put some more stakes in the pot to support the other vines, and I’m feeding them tomato food as regularly as I can remember to (about once a week..ish) but I don’t know what else to do!
As some kind of demonstration of my plant-based ineptitude I have a selection of pots sitting cheek by jowl in front of the house who I water roughly at the same interval, half of them are too dry and the other half have teeny flies which the Internet tells me are due to overwatering…. sigh.
ahhh, tomatoes…. i love growing them… and over the years i’ve neglected and killed them in almost every possible way, so i can probably help you!
i found a useful thing on the internets:
http://gardening.about.com/od/growingtips/tp/Tomato_Tips.htm
ignore them all except 7, 8 and 9. And possibly 10. Of these, 8 is the most important. Pinch out sideshoots! All the time! There’s a nice little picture on that page if you don’t know what i mean. (Unless you’re growing bush tomatoes, but most varieties are cordon – do you know what variety yours are?)
You deffo need to stake when fruit start appearing. Mine are usually supported with a ramshackle arrangement of twine and bamboo canes which collapses periodically. Btw yours are doing really well if they have fruit already, mine are miles behind and have barely considered flowering. It sounds like you are looking after them marvellously. Just don’t over-water – only water when the soil feels dry, otherwise the fruit splits. Good luck! Am happy to discuss vegetable growing over a brew at any time if i can be of any more help.
ps. Home grown tomatoes are TEH_AWSUM, they are so, so, sooo much better than shop bought spray-ripened ones in this country, it was a fine and wise choice to grow them!
Thank you for the excellent advice! I’m off out to go pinch off all the teeny leaves and get rid of the yellow bits at the bottom that had convinced me I was failing!
Hopefully I will be able to make some kind of avant garde salad with a single cherry tomato perched on the top to ensure that they are appreciated as much as they deserve.
I am in awe of your vegetable growing abilities, so you’ll have to impart more wisdom sometime (I may need to find some more pots first)…
When thinking about tomatoes out of control remember “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.” No one is safe!!