This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
Tomato gro-bag compost
Ann Ennis2
Posts: 50
My tomatoes were a complete failure this year. The seeds germinated well, the plants grew on, but then the flowers either didn't develop fruits or produced very few, very late fruits which didn't ripen at all. To add insult to injury they then developed blight! I have binned the plants but should I also throw out the compost they were in, or could it be safely added to our own compost bins? I don't want to build up problems for next year.
0
Posts
Hi Ann. What a bad year for you! Still, one tiny ray of sunshine is that the compost is perfectly safe to add to your bins. You could even use it to pot other things in. The blight spores won't survive. New ones will arrive next year, of course, but we may not have the conditions for it to infect our plants then. They need a Smith Period, which is 48 hours of minimum temperature of 10C and very high humidity, about 90%, to germinate. We had this in August here in Kent, and my outdoor toms got it.
I've found that if you keep an eye on your plants and promptly cut out any leaves or stems showing symptoms, you can delay the damage and get a crop.
Hi Jude, thanks so much for your helpful reply. We are in East Anglia and quite often have the same weather conditions as parts of Kent.Still don't know why I didn't get the fruits I was expecting, but onward and upward as they say. There's always next year!
Ann, the tomato grow bag compost will have used up any nutrient so do not pot anything else in it, put it on the compost heap as part of the mix.
Right let us talk about fruit germination. We have all noticed a shortage of insects this year and a closed greenhouse is difficult for them to get in so you have to give a hand. Open the green house during the warm days and walk in gently shake the plants to scatter the pollen when blossom shows, I also carry a fine small paint brush and gently tickle each flower thus doing the insects work for them. This year was a good year for me plenty of fruit, it needs to be warm and around midday when the flowers open fully, yes extra work but worth it. Plants need plenty of air around them crowding them together helps spread disease, if I find the odd leaf I take it off and burn it if it is spreading I put a bag over the plant carry it out and burn it, have not had blight in years when those around me did have it. We get out what we put in and for a few minutes extra per day to ensure a good crop must be worth it.
Frank.
It does sound like a pollination problem. If you grow undercover, lots of ventilation is important to let insects in and to help prevent diseases - especially if plants are a bit crowded.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
That's a shame Ann.
We've not noticed a lack of insects and this has been the best year ever for tomatoes for us too - we're in Norfolk. The plants succumbed to blight eventually, but not until almost all the very heavy crop was ripe 
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Thanks, everyone. These were outdoor tomatoes, well spaced out, and the blight only just hit, long after you'd have expected any fruit, so no chance of recovery. They were also supposed to be blight resistant varieties, but really it must have been a pollination problem. So I will add the compost to our bins and reuse it that way, so that not absolutely everything was wasted!