Mrs Rucks Tomato - bush or cordon?

[Guest]

2011 cat. Garden Peach. Indeterminate. Cordon. Produces medium-sized fruit with an orange/pink colour, resembling that of Peaches. Thought to date from 1850s.

[Scarlet]

Thank you very much

[rollingrock]

ll the extra greenery give much smaller fruits. Dense greenery can delay fruit ripening and can also cause fungal disease in the greenhouse.

the science and side by side trials says otherwise.

[Scarlet]

the science and side by side trials says otherwise.

I'm prepared to have my opinions swayed post up the links of the science and trials and I'll have a read.
Have you got any photos of your toms in the ground while caged?

I've left a few spare toms to their own devices outside before and they've been a sorry mess and have cropped little fruit so I'd be interested to see your photos. What varieties do you grow?

[rollingrock]

i grow the following varieties :delicious, white wonder, san marzano , sun gold, lemon boy are more common ones i grow.

As for tomato cage there lots good designed ones but they are tough find in uk so i make my own. two strong stakes an wield wire fence is all that is need to make good
cage I post picture when get chance

[Scarlet]

You manage to get beefsteaks to ripen when left to their own devices in the UK? I'm in the sunny South West and if I was planting toms outside I would look at tomatoes with a shorter seed to harvest time....especially if you are letting it produce lots of greenery and flowers. When do you get your first fruits? Where abouts in the UK are you?

[Jungle Jane]

Rolling rock have you done a side by side test of one plant with sideshoots,one plant without? Unless it's a bush variety I always nip out the side shoots. Last year one of my plants wasn't progressing as well as the others (all moneymaker) so I had a good look at it & I'd missed a sideshoot low down near the ground,the stem of it was over a foot long,so all the plants energy was going into producing this long stem instead of producing fruit like the others. Getting rid of the sideshoots puts the energy into fruit production & more sugars would be going to the fruit too.

[Thelma Sanders]

I must admit that, with the cordon toms, I often allow a side shoot from the bottom to grow, give it its own cane and treat it the same as the mother plant. In effect a double cordon.
This does seem to increase the yield - but I certainly wouldn't allow them to grow as many sideshoots as they could; I don't even allow the larger determinate varieties to do that!

[Scarlet]

I must admit that, with the cordon toms, I often allow a side shoot from the bottom to grow, give it its own cane and treat it the same as the mother plant. In effect a double cordon.D

I often do double cordons. I think it gives a good crop and doest take as much room as two plants. I love Pantano toms but they take ages to ripen so I will let an extra stem grow and stop early for the toms to ripen.

[Greenleaves]

Hi Rollingrock

I am a novice when it comes to growing tomatoes....what does caged mean please?

Thanks in advance

[rollingrock]

Greenleaves tomato cages are a device like in link below
http://www.tomatocage.com/
as said you can make own with bit stuff from hardware store.
they are used to allow a tomato plant to stand up right and spread out as grows and still be supported. the basic concept of tomato cage has been around since before 1865 though back then they called hoop training.

[Greenleaves]

Thanks, seems to be more relevant to American growers than those in the UK

[rollingrock]

Thanks, seems to be more relevant to American growers than those in the UK

the concept works no matter where it is used.
uk growers should take page from American growers.

[Nicos]

Taking the thread a bit off subject....

The French tend to use metal tomato spirals to support their tomatoes.
I've never heard of tomato cages before ( nor tomato spirals before I came to live here)

It's always interesting to pick ideas from other cultures!

Thing about cages is that I can imagine they would work well outside or in large greenhouses where there is a decent flow of air to help prevent fungal spores from taking hold?
Being in France we do get hotter , dryer summers than most of the U.K. so I could imagine the cages could work here.(Even so, the locals strip off most of the leaves in the late summer to encourage ripening).

Hmmm...cages ...interesting concept- I've been looking on gooooogle images and seen quite a variety you can buy, or better still, make yourself.

[veggiechicken]

Do tomatoes have rights? I couldn't bring myself to cage them - doesn't seem very kind! Anyway, how do you get your hand into a cage to pick the toms?