Gardener's Delght?

What a pity about the BER. You seem to have had a good crop though.
I like those plum shaped tomatoes best I think.

You did well with the Gardener's Delight too :) Congratulations !

There must be a way of treating the soil for Blight.

I know BER is uneven temperatures and watering.....impossible to control outdoors but I seem to remember that a dose of epsom salts can help.....I think.......
The variety makes such a difference, some are resistent to many things like green back etc
the best , tastiest and earliest in my gh are Golden Sunrise and Sweet 100
Both long trusses of cherry tomatoes on cordon plants, no diseases at all, whereas the Alicante in the gh had some BER.......older variety I suppose....

Hi Balcony
You put such a lot of work and thought into your balcony and allotment, so its good to see that some of the tomatoes have done very well.

Hi Balcony. Well done, some of your tomatoes look lovely. Very unfortunate about the BER! I have only grown a few tomatoes and had great results. I wasn't sure what BER was, so I googled it. Interestingly when I googled BER, I got a host of possible explanations (Berlin Airport area code, Bit Error Rate, Building Energy Rate, Bureau of Education and Research) ....... Adding the word 'tomato' to the search, certainly helped...... (BLOSSOM END ROT) .... lol.

PS The 'rhs.org.uk' website have an interesting article on it, suggesting a calcium deficiency is the main cause. This still doesn't explain why one of your crops suffered and the other didn't.

Thanks everyone for your comments! :-))

This is the first blog I've done with photos using the new OS (Operating System) on my computer. After I had located my photos - a long process having to go through many steps - I found it as easy as Windows to locate the photos I was interested in & upload them to GoY. I'm pleased with that - minor - progress! :-))

@Hywel: Thanks for your comment & yes, I have done quite well with these tomatoes. The Plum (Heart) shaped ones you like are called 'Sunstream' & I got the seeds by saving them from a packet of tomatoes that came in our on-line shopping just before Christmas 2013. I liked the taste - quite sweet - & decided I would try my hand at them. Though most supermarket toms come without a name these however did have a name.

@Diane: As Blight is mostly an airborne fungus there is little that can be done about it other than doing your best to keep the leaves dry (or use propriety fungicides) so the spores can't germinate on damp leaves. The spores can remain in the soil on infected material but, as far as I know, they can't overwinter directly in the soil, they need infected plant material.As the plants on my balcony don't get wet leaves my plants generally remain free of it.

@Pamg: Good to hear your tomatoes are doing so well for you! Although your 'Alicante' tomatoes got BER it may depend in part on the soil/compost they were grown in. A lack of Calcium it seems is the principal suspect though there are other factors.

@:TT: Thank you very much, I do try & do my best to get the best I can out of both worlds! I have got quite a few tomatoes but, as I say in the blog above, I'm unlikely to be harvesting them for more than 10 days at the outside.

@: Alanb: I very sorry for not having put the words in full in brackets after the letters. I think it may have been because I was inspired to write the blog on tomatoes as I had been reading a Tomato Newsletter I get every Saturday morning. I'd been reading it & left a comment when it occurred to me to write a blog on GoY & add some photos & that way share my experience with a larger gardening community. That's the only reason that comes to mind for not explaining what the letters meant! Normally I like to explain what the letters I use stand for but on this occasion I forgot.

It's interesting the results - often quite unexpected - a search engine may throw up! Some of your results were certainly & totally unexpected!

It seems - apart from the the actual growing conditions - the variety you use can also be responsible. The few in my photo represent only a tiny proportion of the fruit actually picked & that which is still on the plants! So it doesn't bother me very much.

Onething I didn't mention is as well as the usual regular tomato food I always add the balls of slow release fertiliser to the grobags, and I buy the better quality grobags too......it does help I'm sure.

I grew different varities this year Balcony and although doing well, we don't like them, wish I'd grown my good old G. Delight, yours seem to be doing ok and I can fair taste them, lol.....

Hi Balcony, I didn't mean to criticise, I was just interested to know what BER was. Great first blog.

@Pamg: No doubt both helped you get better tomatoes! :-))

@ Lincslass: Sorry to hear you didn't like the varieties you have grown this year, what were they & what problems did you have, if any? GD is an outstanding tomato I've grow it several years now. It has a true tomato taste I think. When I started picking the first a couple of weeks ago we still had one or two supermarket toms left. I found them to taste just like water after having eaten a few GD!

@Alanb: I didn't take your post as criticism, Alan, you can rest assured! :-)) It was my fault for not explaining what the initials meant. I'd just come from a tomato growing website to here & forgot I might be talking to people who might not understand them! My apologies once again for the slip up. Anyway it served to get you do do some investigation for yourself! :-))

On Friday I harvested what I'm pretty sure will be the last of my tomatoes for this year,; blight is so extended that I don't expect to see a single decent tomato on Monday! :'(( I expect to have to pull up all the plants in the two beds & get rid of them as they can't be composted - blight spores can continue to live on living tissue for some time. The idea method for getting rid of it would be to burn the affected plants but we are not allowed to do so by the rules & regulations that govern our use of the allotments. :-(( The means the spores will still continue to exist & infect all members of the potato & tomato family!

Sure did, it was interesting.

I was right about the harvesting of my last Toms - on Monday I pulled all the plants up on my allotment & put them on the rubbish tip at the top of the field.

Today I did likewise with all of Gerry's tomato plants as well. :'(( We didn't get a single edible tomato from any of the plants on his two plots! :'((

It was a terrible shame to see so many plants with tomatoes riddled with blight on the rubbish tip. Some of the fruits were very big but with big brown areas indicating they were infected with blight.

Balcony the ones I grew were Marmande, they had loads of fruit but the toms themselves didn't get very big, tough skins and the insides are mushy, Hildare, they tasted good but each plant only produced one truss of toms and Maskotka disappointed with both the taste and amount of fruit produced, I always share plants with my son and daughter and they had pretty much the same results...

I grew Marmande last year as well! I had two plants this year; one on the allotment, which got blight & died very quickly, the other is on my balcony here at home. It only has 4 big tomatoes (the one on my plot had no more than 5) which are still very green.

I also found the fruit to be largely tasteless & very mushy inside. They make terrible sauce/paste as they have FAR too much water in them. We tried to convert a load into tomato sauce last year but it was a complete waste of time!

I haven't grown the other two you mention. I've only grown the two I talked about in my blog above. I harvested a big handful of 'Gardener's Delight' form our balcony this afternoon! There are still a lot on the plants! :-)) At least these don't look like getting blight!