Tomato blitz!

8 comments

Tomato blitz!

I bought a packet with 5 varieties of tomato seeds about the end of March. I started them off in the propagator indoors then put them outside on the table in the corner of the balcony.

About the middle of May I took them down to the GH on Gerry’s allotment. They made little progress even there.

The season started off terribly for me this year as the seedlings suffered from the cold spring. In June I was convinced I wasn’t going to see any tomatoes this year! The plants I put out on my allotment were pathetic looking things! I was ashamed to plant them out! Nevertheless I thought “You never know with plants, I might get a few tomatoes if the season isn’t as cold & rainy as last year.” I’m now so glad I planted them out as I have had quite a reasonable crop to end the season.

I sowed 5 different varieties: ‘Marmande’, ‘Moneymaker’, ’Gardener’s Delight’, ‘Garden Pearl’ & ‘Sunbaby’. The first four gave me more than sufficient plants in the end but for some reason not a single plant of ‘Sunbaby’ survived!

Tomato ‘Garden Pearl’ & ’Gardener’s Delight’ seeds:

Marmande seedlings just transplanted:

Tomato seedlings in kitchen:

I brought 3 plants of ‘Marmande’ back home from the GH to grow on my balcony:

I grew one in the greenhouse (8th July) on the allotment … :

… & nine at the top of my allotment:

I’d never grown beefsteak type before so didn’t really know what to expect.

Marmande at top of plot ripening:

I harvested many tomatoes from the different plants & it has been interesting to see just how much difference there has been between the 3 environments they were grown in!

Plot 12A: Tomatoes Marmande just picked:

Greenhouse: Tomatoes Marmande just picked:

Balcony: Tomatoes Marmande just picked:

As you might expect for uniformity of size & shape & appearance the GH ones come out on top. The ones grown on my balcony had the best attention with the most feeding but even so I was rather disappointed with them. The shape & size & appearance were halfway between those grown outdoors on the allotment & the one plant in the GH.

‘Garden Pearl’:

The ‘Garden Pearl’ plants, that I had intended to put in the 5 hanging baskets I have on the balcony, did really, really well!

Unfortunately they were grown in the soil on the allotment &, as it turns out, were planted too close together as the stems became interwoven & that made picking the fruit rather difficult. Nonetheless they gave me tons of little roundish fruits that mostly were a little pinkish rather than tomato red, though some of the most mature fruit was red.

I’ll be growing these again next year but in the hanging baskets on the balcony & not in the allotment soil. They had quite a nice tomatoey flavour.

’Gardener’s Delight’:

The few plants of ’Gardener’s Delight’ that survived made very, very tall plants that were very vigorous but didn’t produce nearly as many trusses as I would have expected.

Again maybe it was due to the very poor start, even though the 3 very hot weeks we had in July spurred all my plants along. I was able to harvest a few trusses. I’d hoped they would ripen before the first frosts that we generally get from the 3rd week of October onwards but I picked them all before ‘Late Blight’ ended up killing the plants.

The taste is always good from this tomato, a little sharper than others but the fruit are just a nice bite size. I’ll be growing more of them next year.

Comparison of size between ’Gardener’s Delight’, ‘Marmande’ from plot, ‘Garden Pearl’ & ‘Marmande’ from GH:

‘Moneymaker’:

As for ‘Moneymaker’, the only 4 surviving plants I put out in the allotment in July! They were once again poor things that I “hid” amongst the Pumpkins! Again, thanks to the very hot weather we had during July they really took off! I’ve never seen tomato plants grow so fast!

I’d manured the bed for the Pumpkins using well rotted horse manure only about 4 or 5 weeks earlier. The Pumpkins & the tomatoes went crazy, the tomatoes reached almost 2m in height! The Pumpkins threw out runners at least 4m long before I cut them back by half & they recovered that length a few weeks later! As for the tomato fruit, well, they set very late, well into August, so I didn’t got many trusses & none of the fruit had matured sufficiently to pick till October. Even so I’m very happy with the few trusses I did get, especially after having been such poor specimens to start with & considering the short time they had in which to grow & fruit.

In short, thanks no doubt to the 3 very hot weeks in July this year, I’ve ended up with many more tomatoes than I know what to do with! So I’m “over the Moon” with my tomatoes this year! (Last year I lost ALL my plants, bar 1, to blight!)

• 21 Oct, 2013
• 6 likes

More blog posts by balcony