[hubballi]

This year I have grown from seed

Alicante
Roma
Sungold (shop bought plant)
Gardener's delight
Moneymaker

The plants themselves have grown (especially Sungold, Alicante) very very tall. In fact too tall for my 6 x 4 lean to greenhouse. The plants are healthy and I have fed with comfry every week but the fruit is very sparse. I have kept up pinching out the side shoots. In fact up to now I have had about 5 ripe toms off the Sungold but the others that are growing are still green, some just starting to turn. As it's nearly the end of summer (this happens every year) I will probably find myself with nothing really ripe enough before the light starts going.

The greenhouse is S/E facing that has green netting due to it getting too hot when the sun is out (April was very hot)

Surely the idea of growing toms is to have them all through summer.

Note to self: Next year grow only the tumbling type in pots.

[mumofstig]

IMO It is quite difficult to get toms much earlier, but once they start ripening you usually get a steady supply until it gets too cold in the greenhouse.

[hubballi]

Ok. I will keep the faith :-)

[shokkyy]

I've come to the conclusion that the only tomatoes that are very useful for actually eating fresh in this country are cherry tomatoes, because they're the only ones that ripen early and keep on cropping until the weather closes in. I now grow those for eating, and grow larger cordon and bush tomatoes purely for making passata or freezing, i.e. for cooking. I've been picking Gartenperle since the beginning of July, but my Rio Grande, Alicante, San Marzano and Principe Borghese are not even close, and this year they don't have much fruit either.

[1st time veg grower]

Same thing has happened with some of my tomato plants in my greenhouse - the striped stuffer plants in particular. They have a few green fruits right at the top but none further down the plant. I have no idea why as they have been treated exactly the same as all the others which are 'normal'. I pinched the top out of all the plants as they had already reached the top of my greenhouse and all they did was stretch up further!

My sungold cherry toms are outdoors and have so far had a small handful of ripe toms over the last three days or so. I have one Alicante tomato that is almost ripe in the greenhouse. That's it.

I decided to grow all my cherry toms outdoors as they ripened well last year outside and put the bigger tomatoes in the greenhouse in the hope I got a more decent amount of ripe larger ones this year. Think that those that have managed to have more ripe already are probably further down south or have heated greenhouses!

So your tomatoes sound about right to me!

[sunshineband]

Hubbali I notice you worry a lot about your crops not being OK.


Every year is different -- some years one veg does well, and the next not so successful: usually this is due to our very veried weather conditions as well as our own practices.


So be reassured -- same for us all 

[Babstreefern]

Always, always, cut back toms when they grown to the fifth level (about 4ft to 5ft tops), then snip them off so they don't grow any higher.  Also, when you have flowers, tap them every so often.  And, finally, don't forget to feed them.  When they have flowers, once a week, when they have fruit, twice a week. And really finally, water them everyday, and don't hold back on the watering either

[Lardman]

I've had exactly the same problem with my cherry toms this year - absolutely useless. I've got 1 -2 trusses before they hit the greenhouse roof.  I expect to be picking the last of the black cherry, sungold and sunbaby next week.

Not a good year for tomatoes at all. 

[1st time veg grower]

Always, always, cut back toms when they grown to the fifth level (about 4ft to 5ft tops), then snip them off so they don't grow any higher.  Also, when you have flowers, tap them every so often.  And, finally, don't forget to feed them.  When they have flowers, once a week, when they have fruit, twice a week. And really finally, water them everyday, and don't hold back on the watering either

Unfortunately for me it wasn't as simple as that! I did most of the above and I like I said, I still had the same problem as the OP with my striped stuffer plants. Where the problem was with my plants was that they didn't even develop any flowers to tap to begin with - it wasn't that they weren't setting, they just didn't have any flowers! I'm not sure what 'levels' are but if they are same as trusses, which is what I was told to go by, then at 4ft I wouldn't have had any fruit on them at all as the flowers only started flowering when they reached that height! I also did pinch the tops out off mine and they continued to grow - not new growth, they developed thicker stems and just stretched up higher so they still are touching the top of the greenhouse (which is about 8ft tall)! I'm not chopping them down again else I'll lose have the fruit. They have all done this - even the ones that are behaving normally otherwise. This is my first year with a proper green house and thought this was normal behaviour! Interestingly (to me anyway ) the outdoor ones that I have pinched out have not done the same thing.

[Totty]

When are you sowing the seed? may not make too much difference and location probably matters more, but in a bid to get earlir crops this year i sowed all of ours on early march. Indoors. Then put out to heated propagator. Still only meant we had toms about two weeks earlier, even though the seed went in a month or so earlier.
 I think maybe the slightly cooler conditions when young mean our plants dont race upwards, which means they are not too tall and spindly when planting out. All are put into large pots and crop steadily from late june. Alicante, Golden Sunrise, Ferline, Ildi, Black Prince, Gardeners Delight, Tigrella and Pineapple have all done ok this year.

Totty

[JayG]

It doesn't matter how experienced you are, when you try something different it's very difficult to know whether the result is great, average, poor, or disastrous (OK, I lied about the last option!) 

This is my first year growing greenhouse tomatoes (because it's my first year of owning a greenhouse!) and I'm happy that all 3 varieties have cropped, but I have no way of knowing whether it is a good or bad crop for these particular varieties in this particular year. In the long term further experience will no doubt provide the answer (in the short term I will have another go at running the "Home-grown tomato survey", probably starting in about October, to try and save time!) 

[shokkyy]

Yes, actually I should have said that all my tomatoes are grown outdoors. Last year was a cracker for tomatoes. I had pounds of Gartenperle stashed in the freezer because there was far more than we could eat fresh or sauteed, made a few jars of sundried tomatoes and a couple of dozen jars of passata.

[hubballi]

When you saw Monty Don in his greenhouse a few weeks ago his toms were textbook perfect and that was then.

I have tried growing basil in the Tom's pots but they get eaten as small holes in the leaves. It's not slugs or snails.

[feelingbroody]

Morning all

my question is not really about too tall toms but they are not ripening at all

This is only the second year I have grown them outside in pots in a sunny sheltered location and there is a plethera of green toms all varieties but no sign of ripening.

I am feeding them twice a week as it has been suggested.

If all else fails there is a fab recipe on here for green tomato chutney 

Should I be doing something different ?

Thanks folks

Broody

[JayG]

Tomatoes need warmth to ripen (even more than sunshine, although of course the two tend to go together!)

You can't do much about that, especially outdoors. Last year I thought my outdoor toms had got blight, so picked the whole lot off (15 lbs off two plants!) and ripened them very successfully in trays on the kitchen windowsill.

Other than keeping your eyes open for signs of blight, I don't think there's much else you can do except pray for some warm weather.