I love to grow tomatoes ever year they are such a rewarding fruit to have in the garden and i don't mind giving them the love they deserve to bear the fruits we love so much. I always grow some from seed and and also buy a couple of plants in too so i have plants a different stages as well as back up in case of mishap with seedlings.
With my seedling i spend a lot of time potting and re potting these maybe 4 or 5 times before they go into their final place for the summer. I will usually grow them in very small cells and keep them inside the house around February as it is warm here than my green house at this time of year and pot them up as they get bigger, i keep them tight and compacted in their pots other wise they would just be surrounded with wet soil and the top get green mould, the plants usally tell me when they are ready to be potted up as they will be slightly yellower (see the right hand side plant looks a little yellow ) than other plants that still have a little growth space.
As the plants grow bigger the none bush variety will need a bit of nipping to help all the energy go to the stronger stems to bear lots of fruit, otherwise your end up with sprawling stems everywhere and not much fruit which happened to me the very first time i grew tomatoes, i thought tomato triffids had taken over the garden.
as each stem grows you will get 2 main stems and in between the 2 main a new stem will grow it is this stem that needs nipping out, i use an old kitchen i keep for the garden to do this to make a nice clean cut.
i keep my tomatoes watered at all times and don't let them dry out and i don't use any fertilizer on them until the first fruit comes as they don't need it, I also plant my tomatoes out in the garden in the hottest and sunniest part of my garden as i use my green house for cucumbers. However i will not ever plant my tomatoes out in the garden until June comes as May is still an unpredictable month and night frosts can really hit and even kill all the hard work that has gone into the plants so far.
Tomatoes need heat and a bit of feed to grow and sunshine for flavour. However we have had a late year for tomatoes as the summer has been pretty gloomy and i got loads and loads of green tomatoes and just needed the sunshine to turn them. Thank goodness for the Indian summer a few blistering hot sunny days and all my tomatoes popped red and yellow in a few days now leaving me with the quandary of what to do with such a vast crop. Sophie and I have spent ages selecting and picking the best tomatoes and Sophie uses her little shopping trolley to gather them and wheel them down the garden.
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