Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Mark's Sussex Allotment on March 05, 2014, 21:02
-
I have some tomato seedlings that are about 2 inches high and just starting to produce their first true leaves.
The cats keep knocking over the plant pots and the wife has ordered me to move them out if the house.
Will they survive a Unheated polytunnel at this stage?
The poly has been 28.9 to -1.7 degree this week.
-
Anything below 10C and they will sulk. Not only will they sulk, if it's too low it can permanently check them. Anything approaching zero and it's curtains.
Certainly your -1.7C would have seen them off. If your polytunnel is not heated, it looks like you've jumped the gun in starting them.
-
i personally wait until the over night temp in the tunnel is 5 degrees plus. i wouldn't think about putting them out for a couple of months yet.
especially at only 2 inches high, last year mine were over 2 foot high before they went out due to the long winter.
if it were me i would bin them and start again, that would be in over a month time if you have to get them straight outside.
-
If there kept with fleece over them or in a deep box with a sheet of glass over The top to stop the frost and cold air getting in, so you think they could make it?
My potatoes have been chitting in there for a month...,
-
No I don't think they'll make it if we get a good frost. Additional protection without supplemental heat would only be good for a couple of degrees.
Spuds are a different matter, tomatoes are warm climate plants. Your spuds will be OK providing they don't actually freeze. Tomatoes need to be kept well - and I do mean well - above freezing. You may be lucky, but we've a way to go yet.
-
OK, thanks Dave
-
They will go blue eventually and never recover. Start again. Plants that get a good start, with good light and warmth and get planted out with no check to growth, will produce more, over a longer period than plants that are sown out of season and forced through.
Totty
-
Sounds like you have to weigh up the cost/benefit comparisons between ditching the tomato seedlings and starting again, or politely defying your wife.
Can you put the seedlings somewhere where the cats will not knock them over?
-
Sounds like you have to weigh up the cost/benefit comparisons between ditching the tomato seedlings and starting again, or politely defying your wife.
Can you put the seedlings somewhere where the cats will not knock them over?
put the cat out instead LOL :lol: problem solved
-
Carol Kirkwood was confident enough to start this morning's weather forecast with next week's weather, which will be dominated by a 'proper' area of high pressure.
That will mean increasing daytime temperatures as the week goes on but with possibly severe frosts at night.
That's about the worst possible combination for young plants in a PT, especially those as tender as tomatoes, because they are likely to alternately roast then freeze (but not for long! :nowink:)
If you can't resolve the 'domestic situation' and keep them safely in the house I think you should bin them, although there's nothing to stop you putting them in the PT anyway and praying for a miracle!
-
Cats can get on all windowsill and if they're not on a window they'll get too leggy.
In the bin then :(
-
Send the cat to the kennels and the wife to her mum for a few months... :nowink: :nowink: :nowink: