[Sleepingpopman]

  Hi Everyone, SORRY it's a long one.
We have grown our Tomato's & Cucumbers the exact same way in our small greenhouse,
even when we have gone on holidays sometimes for 2 weeks, for the last 11yr's.
We plant them into small trugs with holes in the bottom, with a mixture of compost &
grow bag, a handful of growmore & a sprinkling of Epsom salts, each small trug is then
placed on blocks in a large trug which is filled with water & kept topped up, we also have
French Marigolds planted in with them & they have done very well but for the last 2yr's
(no hol's) they have not done anyway near as good & this year almost a total failure.   
The cucumber came into flower & then died off,  the tomatoes, the salad 1 looks very sick &
isn't doing anything, the Gardeners Delight is not growing as good as normal but it is flowering
& we are getting a few cherry tomatoes    Now the question. Is it all down to the increase in temp'  ?
 Look forward to your thoughts.
Keith & Sharon

 

[Growster...]

I guess you're right about the temperature. Here, we have the same issue, and compared with toms grown outside in a semi-shaded area, they've taken a long time to get established!

My take on it is, that the plants rocketed away too quickly in the mild Spring, and outgrew themselves before the normal growth procedure for fruiting had time to settle in.

That's very unscientific, but the signs we had were few trusses early on, a bit more height, and fewer leaves than usual. The trusses started halfway up this year, and are now starting to 'act normally'!

YOu could give them a splosh of Tomorite as a bit of a boost, as the Growmore might well have fizzled out by now!

[goose]

My toms appeared to get off to a bad start but soon caught up. the yield is good, but what i dont understand is why all of the outdoor ones are ripening and the ones in the greenhouse all still green

[Growster...]

My toms appeared to get off to a bad start but soon caught up. the yield is good, but what i dont understand is why all of the outdoor ones are ripening and the ones in the greenhouse all still green

I think it's because they're just too hot...

The bloke at Thanet Earth told me that toms need light, not heat when they're forming, and like yours, our GH toms are way behind the outdoor ones!

I'm thinking of taking out a few more leaf branches to see if I can get them going better!

[steven c]

as others have said i think this year has just been too hot on the couple of really hot days our greenhouse got up to over 50 degrees and regularly around 40 they seemed to shrivel up a while ago but now seem to recovered but yield not what it usually is  Rosella Gardeners delight and Sungold. nice toms but few.

[lettice]

Not seen any problems with tomatoes and cucumbers this year.
Been doing as well as they always do for me in the greenhouse and outside.

Tomatoes all producing and ripening lovely now.
Picked loads the last week, as shown in the middle two pics, top pic is yesterday.
My outdoor tomatoes shown are Bush Cherry Falls, grown in pots. First year of growing this variety and will grow it again next year.
The greenhouse tomatoes shown are Nectar Rose, Tigrella and Golden Sunrise.

My outdoor San Marzano (for tomato paste) I will be picking this weekend. All producing and ripening well.
Picked some of the Marmande this morning, shown in bottom pic.
As ever, some grow an odd shape, hilarious. Still have lots growing and ripening nicely. I always roast these and stuff them with the chopped insides and a few chopped leaves of basil.
They have always done well for me, but think they have ripened a tad quicker than normal this year

Have been watering early evening up to July, but always change to early morning watering from August. One 6l watering can does the tomato and cucumber raised beds fine along with a handful of assorted trays of seedlings and pots of basil in the greenhouse.
Feed with Tomorite once a week, Friday is my feed day.
I always keep my greenhouse door open during the summer months and have a garden mesh cover over the door area.
The temp hovers around 35-40c at the highest times. Except for those mad few days last month.
Max temp here since beginning of July has been 23-29c, a handful of days 30-33c and of course those two daft hot days.
Lows from beginning of July in the early hours has been 15-20c, except those two daft days.
Two days or rain in July, registering only 2mm on 22nd July and 0.4mm 25th July.

[Sleepingpopman]

 Hi everyone & thanks for all your replies   
It sounds like we all agree, down excessive heat over those very hot days,
our greenhouse even with the door & roof fully open reached 56c.
I forgot to say that I feed them once a week also I had to take a lot off
the salad tom' as it started to dye off & wither really bad. 

[Snow]

Tomatoes pretty  much shut down above 35c as you have found. Not been a problem here in scotland, I think we've only had about a week over 20c with two days high 20s. My chillis are suffering, even the ones I the greenhouse don't like the overnight lows. Not like last year which was such a good summer. Blight has been a big problem over the last few weeks I have had to remove half my outdoor plants and none of the fruit has started to ripen, even with sowing them at the start of march. Inside ones are doing fine thankfully, apart froma couple of varieties that are ill suited to our  climate

[Goosegirl]

Ah. Interesting replies on here. My seedling toms came from a late sowing but put them in large grow bags and hoped for the best and they romped away. Fortunately we let our apple trees grow a bit higher this year, so the 8x6 gh was partly shaded for most of the morning as well as leaving the door open. The window vent opening and a small missing glass pane plus damping down the concrete path with a hosepipe kept the temps reasonably ok. Having said that, we have some big toms that are not ripening so we took off the lower leaves a few days ago to let more light come in.

[hasbeans]

Low temperatures through to mid June, especially overnight seemed to slow down growth and took time to recover from.  Then the recent heatwave caused a fair amount of blossom drop and BER for me.

If you've managed 11 years in a row without a healthy cucumber just deciding to die then you were overdue!

[Ema]

While the night temps are so warm I would take some of the glass out the greenhouse to reduce the heat and improve air flow. It’s been a strange year I’ve never know so much sun in rainy Devon

[Aunt Sally]

Tomatoes don’t like it hot.  Even outdoors it’s been too hot this year.  I shaded mine with fleece when it was very hot and I have a very good crop of Crimson Crush ripening now. 

PS. It can be difficult to grow tomatoes and cucumber in the same greenhouse unless you have space to “zone” it.  Cucumbers like a high humidity and tomatoes don’t.