[Marcus10]

I have 4 Tumbling Toms in a greenhouse and they are cropping superbly. They are grown as a bush, keeping all the sideshoots. However due to the weight of fruit hanging off them, the sidestems keep splitting off the main stem. I am, trying to support them and stop them from tearing totally off the main stem by using garden twine wrapped around the split as a sort of bandage. i dont know whether this will work.

I am a bit of a novice and this is my first year growing bush type Toms.  Is this a normal problem for bush Toms and is it normal to have to support the sidestems  carrying the fruit?
Is there any trick to avoid this problem?

Incidently the yield is fabulous at the moment. A dish of Toms (10ish) every day from the 4 plants. Not quite as tasty as Gardeners delight but still very good. I am not sure how long they will go on yielding this much. Perhaps this is the optimism of a novice  and they will finish by the end of July. I did cheat and use some heat early on and I feed at every watering which is twice daily!

[mumofstig]

You've probably made the growth a bit soft by feeding so often, hence the splitting.

You can't do much about it now, unless you prune the trusses a bit, so just support them as well as you can

[Goosegirl]

Heat early on was probably ok, but feeding twice daily may have led to softer growth, unless you used it very sparingly. Next time, try just to feed very dilute stuff twice a week; also use canes around the plants to tie in stems - like a wig-wam?

[Marcus10]

A belated thanks for your replies. Yes, I think that I have overfed although,
I was  just following the advice on the Chempak packet. I cant complain because i have had lots and lots of Toms. More staking and a little less feed next time!