Just a note in passing to say that last weekend HomeBase in Ipswich had the
sickliest, weediest, nastiest tomato seedlings I have ever seen.

If I had grown them, I would have thrown them.

You have to wonder why they even bothered to put them out on display.

I bought my small number of plants from a local farm shop / nursery.
They were far superior.
I was just looking in HB to see if they had any other interesting varieties.

Should have complained to the manager but was distracted by other things.

Still, I now have two chillis, one sungold tomato, and three courgettes out
in pots and they seem to be happy so far.

Cheers

Dave R

In message , David WE Roberts
writes
Just a note in passing to say that last weekend HomeBase in Ipswich had
the sickliest, weediest, nastiest tomato seedlings I have ever seen.

If I had grown them, I would have thrown them.

You have to wonder why they even bothered to put them out on display.

I bought my small number of plants from a local farm shop / nursery.
They were far superior.
I was just looking in HB to see if they had any other interesting varieties.

Should have complained to the manager but was distracted by other things.

Still, I now have two chillis, one sungold tomato, and three courgettes
out in pots and they seem to be happy so far.

Cheers

Dave R

Need your full address please. I must send my grandchildren somewhere
else for their Sungold fruit. They pillage my plants unmercifully
believing I grow them purely for children. As if I would!

--
Gopher .... I know my place!

David WE Roberts wrote:
Just a note in passing to say that last weekend HomeBase in Ipswich had the
sickliest, weediest, nastiest tomato seedlings I have ever seen.

If I had grown them, I would have thrown them.

You have to wonder why they even bothered to put them out on display.

Heh. They're waiting for me to come along and 'rescue' them.
(last year I bought about 400 vegetable plants in trays at 10p, and we got
quite a good crop from them, plus I potted some up for the school summer
fayre)

I bought my small number of plants from a local farm shop / nursery.
They were far superior.

Of all the things I grow, tomatoes are the ones I always grow from seed.
I've never seen any reason to buy plants in.

I was just looking in HB to see if they had any other interesting varieties.

Interesting varieties come in seeds, not in plants! (I have terrible
trouble every year, cos I grow too many different ones - I think I was
limited to 14 different varieties this year, which is still too many to put
in the greenhouses!)

Still, I now have two chillis, one sungold tomato, and three courgettes out
in pots and they seem to be happy so far.

My yellows, which may or may not be sungold (Hmm, I think they're not,
they're golden sunrise, or something similar) are looking extremely healthy.
Some of the others are straggling. Fakel and Matina are also looking very
happy.

And the 5 I found on the boys' windowsill that I had totally forgotten about
and haven't been watered for nearly 2 weeks are looking great!

Gopher wrote:
Need your full address please. I must send my grandchildren somewhere
else for their Sungold fruit. They pillage my plants unmercifully
believing I grow them purely for children. As if I would!

Have you tried growing a couple of ildi plants? My 4 year old loves them
(the 6 year old and I prefer GD), and they crop /really/ heavily.

On 14 Apr 2010 14:01:08 GMT, wrote:

Interesting varieties come in seeds, not in plants! (I have terrible
trouble every year, cos I grow too many different ones - I think I was
limited to 14 different varieties this year, which is still too many to put
in the greenhouses!)

Still, I now have two chillis, one sungold tomato, and three courgettes out
in pots and they seem to be happy so far.

My yellows, which may or may not be sungold (Hmm, I think they're not,
they're golden sunrise, or something similar) are looking extremely healthy.
Some of the others are straggling. Fakel and Matina are also looking very
happy.

I got several healthy plants of each of these tomatoes (20 for the
greenhouse, others for the neighbours who look after my greenhouse
when I'm away)

Ferline, Aviro, Old Brooks, Austin's Red Pear, Tommy Toe
Rosada (cordon), Chiquito. Koralik, Orange Santa, Tasty
German Orange Strawberry, Pineapple, Red Zebra, Sweet Olive,
Black Krim, Tomatoberry, Ravello, Jakarta, Roncardo.

Wish I had room to grow them all!

--
(¯`·. ®óñ© © ²°¹° .·´¯)

???? ? ???? wrote:
I got several healthy plants of each of these tomatoes (20 for the
greenhouse, others for the neighbours who look after my greenhouse
when I'm away)

Ferline, Aviro, Old Brooks, Austin's Red Pear, Tommy Toe
Rosada (cordon), Chiquito. Koralik, Orange Santa, Tasty
German Orange Strawberry, Pineapple, Red Zebra, Sweet Olive,
Black Krim, Tomatoberry, Ravello, Jakarta, Roncardo.

We're doing well, we only overlap on 2, and I think of those two, all my
Ferline died (planted too early, on poor soil) and I have 2 very scraggily
pinapples left that I'm trying to rescue, but don't hold any hope for.

wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:
Just a note in passing to say that last weekend HomeBase in Ipswich had
the
sickliest, weediest, nastiest tomato seedlings I have ever seen.

If I had grown them, I would have thrown them.

You have to wonder why they even bothered to put them out on display.

Heh. They're waiting for me to come along and 'rescue' them.
(last year I bought about 400 vegetable plants in trays at 10p, and we got
quite a good crop from them, plus I potted some up for the school summer
fayre)

I bought my small number of plants from a local farm shop / nursery.
They were far superior.

Of all the things I grow, tomatoes are the ones I always grow from seed.
I've never seen any reason to buy plants in.

Me too, I grow the heritage tomatoes from Garden Organic, then, if I
remember, I keep the seeds and grow the same thing next year.

Alan

"®óñ© © ²°¹°" wrote in message
...
On 14 Apr 2010 14:01:08 GMT, wrote:

Interesting varieties come in seeds, not in plants! (I have terrible
trouble every year, cos I grow too many different ones - I think I was
limited to 14 different varieties this year, which is still too many to
put
in the greenhouses!)

Still, I now have two chillis, one sungold tomato, and three courgettes
out
in pots and they seem to be happy so far.

My yellows, which may or may not be sungold (Hmm, I think they're not,
they're golden sunrise, or something similar) are looking extremely
healthy.
Some of the others are straggling. Fakel and Matina are also looking very
happy.

I got several healthy plants of each of these tomatoes (20 for the
greenhouse, others for the neighbours who look after my greenhouse
when I'm away)

Ferline, Aviro, Old Brooks, Austin's Red Pear, Tommy Toe
Rosada (cordon), Chiquito. Koralik, Orange Santa, Tasty
German Orange Strawberry, Pineapple, Red Zebra, Sweet Olive,
Black Krim, Tomatoberry, Ravello, Jakarta, Roncardo.

Wish I had room to grow them all!

Space is my problem at the moment.

I grew two tomato plants last year and they were a bit crowded.
I will have to put my one plant in the same bed this year when I have had
time to prepare the bed.

Come the revolution there will be a lot more space and a lot more time but
at the moment I can't bring myself to buy a packet of seed and grow a single
plant.
Easier to get one from a nursery and then perhaps clone a couple from the
side shoots if I have the time.

Cheers

Dave R

David WE Roberts wrote:
Easier to get one from a nursery and then perhaps clone a couple from the
side shoots if I have the time.

Does that work? I did break off a side shoot of one plant last year and
stick it in the side of the grow bag, and was quite surprised it didn't die,
but it didn't actually /do/ anything either.

On 15 Apr 2010 16:18:46 GMT, wrote:

David WE Roberts wrote:
Easier to get one from a nursery and then perhaps clone a couple from the
side shoots if I have the time.

Does that work? I did break off a side shoot of one plant last year and
stick it in the side of the grow bag, and was quite surprised it didn't die,
but it didn't actually /do/ anything either.

Sideshoots can be ripped off and dibbled in, but in my experience the
outcome is a weedy plant and a waste of time

Now of course, in a Majorcan garden or plot, where this is the
propagation of choice, they seem to do very well

--
(¯`·. ®óñ© © ²°¹° .·´¯)

wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:
Easier to get one from a nursery and then perhaps clone a couple from the
side shoots if I have the time.

Does that work? I did break off a side shoot of one plant last year and
stick it in the side of the grow bag, and was quite surprised it didn't
die,
but it didn't actually /do/ anything either.

Tomatoes are one of the easiest plants to propogate via cuttings.
If you let a side shoot grow to a sturdy size instead of pinching it out,
then cut it out carefully with a knife and plant it in very moist compost
then you will very quickly get another tomato plant.

If you go away for a few weeks then come back you may even find side shoots
which have set fruit.
These still seem to propogate fine.
The new plants are obviously behind the main plant in terms if size and
maturity but if you take the cuttings early on in the season you can get a
crop from the cloned plants.

It does occur to me that if you start tomatoes off really early under glass
then you can get an additional 'free' set of plants to plant outside later
in the year.

If you are growing from seed this is not so important (unless you have a
germination failure) but if you buy one or two plants from a nursery then
you can grow additional plants on.

Last year I took a load of cuttings quite late (June, I think) and planted a
group of them in a wide pot.
The result was a number of small plants each of which set a couple of
trusses.
As a group the plants produced about as much as a single larger plant.

If you want to grow a lot of tomatoes but don't have enough space (or
prepared beds) at the start of the season then you can use this strategy to
fill out your greenhouse/garden/allotment as space becomes available without
having to go through multiple sowings of seeds.

Cheers

Dave R

David WE Roberts wrote:
Tomatoes are one of the easiest plants to propogate via cuttings.
If you let a side shoot grow to a sturdy size instead of pinching it out,
then cut it out carefully with a knife and plant it in very moist compost
then you will very quickly get another tomato plant.

As I said, I tried this (half heartedly) last year, but the new plant didn't
come to anything. Maybe it needed more damp.

If you go away for a few weeks then come back you may even find side shoots
which have set fruit.
These still seem to propogate fine.

Now that's interesting. I've felt sad before at cutting off side shoots
that have got as far as flowers. It feels ... mean. Perhaps in future I
will keep a pot of damp soil to stick them into, then they get a fighting
chance.

It does occur to me that if you start tomatoes off really early under glass
then you can get an additional 'free' set of plants to plant outside later
in the year.

My earliest tomatoes (sown in January, indoors) did really badly. Idon't
know if they caught a draft, suffered from poor soil, or didn't get enough
light, but even though the packets all said from January under glass,
everyone I spoke to was basically very "I told you so" about it.
March sowings are doing much better.

On a slight side note, at what point do people find it's best to transplant
to grow bags? Some of mine are starting to get to the size I would expect
to be fine (about 6-9" tall) and I was thinking of putting the first few in
this weekend, but I can't remember when we normally do it.

wrote in message
...
snip
On a slight side note, at what point do people find it's best to
transplant
to grow bags? Some of mine are starting to get to the size I would expect
to be fine (about 6-9" tall) and I was thinking of putting the first few
in
this weekend, but I can't remember when we normally do it.

Depends on where you are :-)

I've just checked and the tomato I potted up outside is about 6" tall above
ground and it seems to be perfectly happy.
We are in Suffolk, near the coast.

It is on a sheltered south facing patio tucked up against the house wall so
it is probavbly warmer than elsewhere in the garden.

As long as you don't expect any more frost then I think you should be O.K.

The courgettes and the chillis also seem happy.

HTH

Dave R

David WE Roberts wrote:
Depends on where you are :-)

Not really, they're in a greenhouse. :-)
A very warm one, at that.

I've just checked and the tomato I potted up outside is about 6" tall above
ground and it seems to be perfectly happy.
We are in Suffolk, near the coast.

Essex, with a very hot back garden, and incredibly hot greenhouse (well, the
one with the sun in someone else's garden - ours is a bit more shaded due to
positioning and lack of direct sun most of the day!)

It is on a sheltered south facing patio tucked up against the house wall so
it is probavbly warmer than elsewhere in the garden.

As long as you don't expect any more frost then I think you should be O.K.

It's not so much the frost as the size, and if it will feel lonely, or if it
will benefit from the extra space to spread its roots yet. It's not long
since they potted into pots!

The courgettes and the chillis also seem happy.

My courgettes are only wee still, but I always have trouble with putting
them out too early, so I'm going to leave them to become giants before I put
them out this year.

And oddly, not a single pepper has germinated. I will sow some more this
weekend. Maybe they know how much I hate them!