Happy New Year!

Well last year was a disaster, I started a new job in July and had to put the greenhouse on the back burner as it has been fairly full on work wise.
We found that the new varieties did a lot of growing but hardly any fruit, only producing one or two fruits per truss, having said that the fruits were huge weighing about a kilo each. The biggest problem was blight they mostly had no resistance at all and in consequince failed badly halfway through the fruiting season and we lost about 50% of the potential crop because of it, the super marzano was the only one that put up well, and eventually cropped well.
So this year we bought some marzano and a beef variety from florence when we were over helping to pick my sister in law's Olives last october, i sowed the seed last week and they are now up and looking good, so I will keep you posted on how things develop.

Growing well

The tomatoes despite the cold weather recently have been growing well, I have had to put a heater with a frost thermostat on at night, this seems to have saved them!
We are now I think past the danger and the forecast predicts good night temperatures, so we should see a good period of growth, I am always amazed at the difference it makes once you can achieve night temperatures above 10c









These flowers are from one of the Beef varieties, they are SO big! Can't wait to see the fruit.

First Flowers

We have the first flowers on the Tomatoes!!
All great news. The recent warm weather has brought them all on well. We are still expecting some cold nights though, so fingers crossed we should be OK.
The picture is a Super San Marzano, these are a plum variety, the rest of my varieties are mostly Red and Yellow Beef types they are not as far ahead as the Marzano, I expect they will flower in about a weeks time.

Planted Tomatoes

We set out the tomatoes into the peat free growbags today, they were getting quite leggy but I wanted to wait until I could see the first truss forming before planting out. They are planted on an angle so as to maximize the height in the greenhouse this will then allow space for an extra truss before they hit the roof and have to be stopped, Last year we managed 5 trusses per plant, which is good going for an unheated system. We have used the New Horizons peat free growbags again, as they were a great success last year, they are easier to water than Peat ones as they don't "ducks back" when dry and I found that the plants did not need extra feeding until much later in the season.

Note the trickle irrigation droppers are in place, although I will hand water for a couple of weeks first to get them well established. We have fixed on the soft string supports too, as the tomatoes grow we shall twist this clockwise around the plant to help give the support it needs, I tend to do this at the same time as I side shoot, it is a fairly dull old job but I love the heady aroma the tomatoes release when handled, so that makes up for it.

flowers

We like to have a few annual flowers to brighten up the borders, so I have sown some Zinnias and Cosmos in Hassey trays. I have also sown some Marigolds to plant around the raised beds to help with pest control throughout the summer

Spring Clean

My Tomatoes have finally got to go out into the greenhouse, they have grown too big for the window sills in the house. So it was time to have a good clear out and first out was the old growbags full of rocket and lettuce, these as you can see from the picture have been laid out along the outside of the greenhouse and into one of the raised beds.

I then sprayed all the walls, ground and roof with a dilute spray of Jeyes, this will help to control all the bugs and diseases that will have been carried over from last year, it is left for 5 minutes and then thoroughly washed off with a hose, you need to be careful not to put any onto the plants, so I did one side at a time to avoid this.

Spring Leap

The last few days have been mild and sunny, the tomatoes have grown 3 inches since the last blog, they are getting a bit leggy and pot-bound, so I have decided to pot them on into large paper pots. I use rolled up broadsheet newspaper, watch the video to see me in action!