Hi,

just visited some friends in Derbyshire - lovely spot on the south side of
the Derwent valley.

This is their first year with a green house and they seem to have done
everything by the book.
Train the vine up wires.
Stop the vine at the fourth truss (eaves height).
Remove the large leaves once the fruit is well grown, to concentrate on
ripening.
They have a reasonably large crop but it is coming to an end, despite the
continuing fine weather.
So there is potential for another month or so of fruit setting and cropping
but the alloted four trusses are in final ripening and everything is pinched
out and stopped off.

Contrast this with my 'tomato jungle' on our south facing patio in Suffolk.
We are growing cherry tomatoes, and there has been no stopping and minimal
training and the vines are spreading ever further.
Flowers are still coming, new fruit is setting, and it looks as though we
will be picking ripe tomatoes until the first frost, which may be as late as
November :-)

Granted that we are in a favoured location, how would you extend the
cropping of tomatoes in a greenhouse if it looks like a good year?
Can you encourage a second vine to grow up from the roots to carry on
flowering as you strip the leaves off the original vine?
I noted that the vine was shooting near the base.
Should you encourage a new vine to develope near the base at the time you
stop out the original vine at the 'four truss' stage?
This seems potentially more productive than ripping out the vine which has
finished fruiting and starting another one, although I suppose you could
grow on cuttings (from leaf axils) in pots if you had the space, ready to
replace the mature vies - you could even remove the final trusses to ripen
off the vine.

Just musing on pros and cons of greenhouse tomatoes - you get a better
climate early in the year but then run out of space to exploit your
advantage.

Cheers
Dave R

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