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Old 17-01-2019, 06:18 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening
Martin Brown[_2_] Martin Brown[_2_] is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Mar 2017
Posts: 267
Default Just picked the last of the outdoor tomatoes

On 16/01/2019 20:19, David wrote:
On Sat, 15 Dec 2018 13:50:20 +0000, David wrote:

It has been a strange year!

Quite a few ripe ones.

I'm now wondering if the green ones will ripen indoors.


Well, more ripened in a brown paper bag.

I did leave a few on the vine. I stripped the vine of almost all leaves
but left it with a few small trusses just for interest.

It looks as though the remaining tiny tomatoes are ripening very slowly.

Cold weather is due, but I'm now wondering if a tomato plant could be over
wintered in a frost free cold greenhouse ready to sprout again next
spring. Given that commercial growers seem to just have a vine going up
20-40 feet in the air on a wire and then just pull it down and loop it as
they pick ripe trusses and the tip grows upwards.


There was a huge tomato plant 10m diameter grown by hydroculture and
supported by pig netting in a round greenhouse at the Science Expo
museum at Tsukuba, Japan that was already many years old when I was
there in the 1990's. Kept frost free and with plenty of light they seem
to be very long lived. I don't know if it is still there. This place:

https://www.japan.travel/en/spot/1454/

My UK outdoor tomato plants have been dead and black for a while now.
This latest hard frost and thin layer of snow will kill all the
remaining tender plants (some of which were still in flower today).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown