Quote:
Originally Posted by furlow
Hi,
I've been trying to search around on google to find any information on
how other peoples crops in the uk (I'm the east to be more specific)
have done this year. My first year of growing marrow has been great
they obviously seam to do great even at temperatures bellow 20C. My
problem has been with my tomatoes and peppers, I know they both fully
into two different speed growing catagories with the peppers going to
take longer to get a crop. The thing is though on my tomatoes I have
quite a few Trusses, although I only pinched out the growing tip only
a week ago after I decided to give up on getting any more than 3-4
trusses. My tomatoes just seam to be growing very slowly, I have them
outside and not in any poly tunnel or greenhouse, but they just
haven't produced this year, I'm usually not so good at getting my
plants out very early (around mid june), but I usually would have
gotten some tomatoes at least by now. I'm blaming the cold rainy
summer we have had this year. Although its actually quite nice today,
about 25C in the sun. Rant over, How has everybody else's Tomatoes
done?
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I don't have a greenhouse, but I usually have good success growing peppers (mainly chilli but also sweet) in pots outside against a sunny wall. This year I had a superfluity of seedlings, so i also tried some in the ground. The ones in pots have been brilliant, the ones in the ground terrible. Even though the ground was warmed up with a black sheeting prior to planting. I think it just isn't warm enough in the ground for them. We have also had some good tomatoes off plants in pots too.
I think the trick in many of these cases is the correct varieties. I chose a specific variety of sweet pepper for pot cultivation, and compact chilli varieties that suit pot cultivation, and also ones that are not late ripening - people have a lot of trouble getting late ripeners like habaneros and rocotos to ripen in this country, even with everything else. And starting soon enough. I got my pepper seeds in a propagator to germinate about 1 March.
We were lucky that the conditions for putting the pepper plants out at the end of May were perfect this year, last year they got whipped by strong winds and cold temperatures, which set them back, and my chillis were poor last year.
You can growing tomatoes fine in the ground if you choosing suitable varieties. For example, look for one called urbikany, its very early and used to cool weather. I had no trouble with it in the ground even in last year's terrible summer.
Choosing special varieties you will have to grow from seed. Tomatoes germinate very easily (in a heated propagator), you start them a bit later, about 6 weeks before putting them outside. Peppers and chillis are trickier. In either case, it is essential to use a fungicide, as the seedlings are very prone to damping off. This is actually the first year I got a sweet pepper to germinate. But when it did, it was off faster than the chillis and I already had some fruit set on it before I put them outside in late May. Though the fruit take a lot longer to develop and ripen than most chillis I've had.