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Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Tomatoes

If, like me, you are no great fan of green tomato chutney now is the time to start taking action.

I sow my tomatoes early and by the time they are being sold in April/May they are beginning to flower. This ensures an early crop and this year my tomatoes, despite a cold May and June, began to produce (in the polytunnel) in June. They have been steadily cropping since but are eager to produce more. This they must not do. These later tomatoes will not ripen and will slow down the ripening of the ones which have set. Time to be ruthless and remove new flowering trusses as they emerge. Let the plants concentrate on the tomatoes they have already set. Feeding is not important now, and personally I only remove leaves that are showing disease or dying back. Later you can defoliate to increase ripening but where tomatoes are still being formed the leaves provide the sugars necessary for their growth.

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