[1st time veg grower]

This year I am very excited as I am miles ahead with both my tomatoes and pumpkins. Two years ago I got only one huuuge pumpkin that ripened off the vine but was amazing - I made 3 batches of soup, 2 loaves of pumpkin bread and a pumpkin pie from it. The outdoor tomatoes produced well but non ripened - I made lots of green tomato chutney.

Last year I only got one pumpkin very late in the season as all the others rotted off. And it rotted rather than ripened off the vine. Tomatoes were the same as the year before.

This year I already have 3 pumpkin fruit set but just on one vine. I learnt about hand pollinating on here and so far its done the trick. My outdoor tomatoes have set 3 trusses each but non have ripened so far. The plants are still much further on than in previous years.

My questions are these:

• With both the tomatoes and the pumpkins do I need to limit the amount of fruit I allow the plants to produce - will this encourage ripening? I would still like some green toms left at the end to make more chutney for my mum, but these mythical red tomatoes that people keep talking about I would love to see...and eat!
• Before the wet weather started (its been raining here everyday for the last 10 days) I had started watering and feeding both the tomatoes and the pumpkins. The feeds I have are liquid feeds that are diluted with water. They are both due another feed but the tomatoes are in pots and are already soaked through - will feeding them more liquid be bad or do they need the feed more than they are bothered about being over watered? Same goes for the pumpkins - the ground is sodden but was told to feed them in order to encourage female flowers as well as male.

Thank you!

[JayG]

• With both the tomatoes and the pumpkins do I need to limit the amount of fruit I allow the plants to produce - will this encourage ripening? I would still like some green toms left at the end to make more chutney for my mum, but these mythical red tomatoes that people keep talking about I would love to see...and eat!

Good question, which has been asked several times and doesn't get any easier to answer, mainly because it is impossible to predict what the weather will do for the rest of the season!

A heavy load of fruit slows the development and ripening of both the early and later-setting fruit and of course there comes a point where there is little chance of them all reaching maturity.

Some have said that a month before the expected first frost is when they stop further fruit setting but I think that is a bit optimistic for us up north, especially for outdoor toms.

In my own experience any winter squash and outdoor tomato setting fruit after the beginning of August is unlikely to reach maturity before the plants runs out of warmth and daylight, but it's hard to not get greedy; you might feel that half-grown pumpkins, or even green tomatoes, is better than a smaller, ripe crop!

Glad to hear that hand-pollinating has increased your "set", don't forget to remove the shrivelled female flower as that can also lead to fruit rot in wet weather.

As for liquid feeding sodden veg; another good question!

Better to wait for a dryer spell but if it keeps raining I'd be tempted to feed with double-strength feed but use half the usual amount; should do the trick!

[1st time veg grower]

That's useful - thank you.

I might do a bit of an experiment - I have a few tomato plants outdoors - so stop fruit setting on some after the beginning of Aug and then leave others...see what happens...

The feeding advice is good too - according to accuweather we're not due a steady break  in the rain (long enough for my clay to dry out in between) for another 10 days. So I might have to feed them before that, how you explained.

Yep have been removing the pumpkin flowers which seem ready so far to be taken off about two days after I have polinated them. I always used to take them off thinking this was the problem, but that in itself did not seem to work - still had most of my baby pumpkins rot or turn yellow and drop off. The two things together so far this year seems to be working much better, I just hope some of the other ones start putting out some female flowers soon too! My biggest pumpkin so far is the size of an old person's bowling ball - that's the only thing I could find in my brain to compare it to! I will decide later what I'm going to do with them regarding how much fruit to leave on!