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What Toms and cucs are you growing?
Crazy Cat
Posts: 41
in Fruit & veg
Hi All,
At last the weather is starting to turn sunny after a disappointing May
So, what toms and cucumber are people growing?
I have (all outside):
- Sweet n Neat tom- currently ablaze with flowers & very small toms growing
- Money Maker- first flowers opened last week
- Siberian red- Was very slow, but now growing well
- Gardeners Delight- reliable, flowering
- Sub Artic- lots of bad reviews but all 3 of my plants are flowering & germinating fine, will have to wait for the tasting
- Rio Grande- currently growing like a triffid- meant to be more reliable than Roma- time will tell
Cucumbers- Telegraph (old reliable!) and Space-master (dwarf, very good disease resistant)
Random question- Can you get 2 crops off determinate Toms?
Last year I grew Minibell (a dwarf determinate). After it finished cropping I severely cut main stalk to 5 inches, leaving just 2 leaves on. Well, I don't know if it was a fluke but it grew back strong and I had a late harvest on Toms again in late September!
I thought determinate types were meant to be produce toms all same time and die- this didn't happen when I severely trimmed...
Any-one else done this? I will be trialling again this year to see!
0
Posts
Indeterminate tomatoes will just keep growing until it gets too cold for them or they get diseased. Commercial growers grow cordons 20 feet tall or more! If they are cut back and a sideshoot grows from a remaining leaf axil, it can develop into a new plant as you found.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for reply.However, the tom I cut back was a determinate...not that I'm complaining getting 2 crops off a plant that is only meant to produce 1.
Determinates typically produce one crop, usually at the same time. You struck it lucky.
My toms in the ground this season:
Cherokee Chocolate
Cherokee Purple
Marianna's Peace
Brandywine OTV
Camp Joy
Anna Russian
Kellogg's Breakfast
Pink Gaetano
Jaune Negib
Last week Monty planted Losetto Tomatoes outside in the ground. Whilst a "bush" type we found they grew like ground cover, no more than 1ft tall but at least 4ft round. Excellent croppers but later it become impossible to pick all the fruit without damaging the plants, you just cannot get underneath to reach them.
We now only use this variety for outside hanging baskets.
We only grow Blight resistant tomatoes outside as we found is a waste of time trying to grow any other varieties, you just never get a crop as the Blight gets the plants first. You can no longer get our favourite tomato "Brigade". So this year it's.....
Losetto -- Hanging Baskets
Ferline - allotment
Fantasio. - allotment
I've never had any luck with large fruit varieties of tomatoes, last year I didn't get a single fruit off of three plants.. One died of blight, the other two both had blossom end rot. A single cherry tomato keep our salads full to bursting with sweet fruit the entire summer though.. so this year I've gone for pretty much all cherry or other small fruit varieties.
Summergold, yellow cherry
Sweet 100, tiny red cherry
Red Cherry Large
Warren's Yellow, yellow cherry
Yellow Pear, larger yellow cherry
and two larger ones:
Tigerella, heirloom.. so perhaps it might be productive
Stripped Caven, smaller sized normal tomato
Latah from The Real Seed Company......early bush types along side some of their Tomatillos called Large Purple Green
All planted out and netted up and growing well with some flowers
It's a long story but all my seedlings died so had to resow again mid April consequently I bought some plants but was limited to what was available locally.
So have-Money Maker, Alias Craig, Tigerella, Golen Sunrise and another yellow cherry bearing one, not sure what it is without checking on the plot.
I've Cerise and a Black Russian variety grown from seed.
Cues - telegraph improved and marketeer.
Mammoth Onions are selling a white variety of toms this yr, is anyone trying them.
Great to hear what types of toms people are growing, there are just so many types to choose; spoilt really!
Each year I try to grow a couple of different types; next season I think I am planning to grow some of the Russian breeds; mix things up a bit!
Am also going to try a beef tomato although how well I will do with the shorter UK season is a guess; oh for the wish of a tropical garden....
Confession
I do like to try keep growing traditional breeds but I must admit the new strands of cucumbers in recent years are brilliant; last couple of years I definitely had bigger yields off the new improved types & the taste was pretty good as well.
If you can't beat them, join them...
cucumbers
tomatoes