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.