This year I’m trying to get a few early tomatoes before our main crop starts to ripen. The only way I could see this happening was by growing some plants in a sunny window inside as it’s too cold in the greenhouse for tomato plants to grow on quickly. I described the first part of my experimental early tomatoes here.
The plants growing on inside probably needed potting on a week or so ago but I've been holding on hoping that the cold evenings would come to an end and the plants could be potted on and left in the greenhouse. I've now given up on that idea and decided to pot the plants on and move them back inside to their sunny window.
If you remember I left 4 plants in the greenhouse and moved 4 plants inside. These are the 8 plants now side by side for comparison purposes. The ones on the left are the 4 plants left in the greenhouse which look rather well considering they've had some nights down to freezing point. The indoor plants on the right have grown leggy which is what I expected. But the aim isn't to produce the best tomato plants but some with earlier fruit. I've potted all the plants up into bigger pots and the 4 leggy plants have gone back in a sunny window until the night time temperatures warm up a bit.
One plant already has a couple of flowers so with a bit of luck these might go on to produce some early tomatoes.
The remaining 4 plants have been repotted and left in the greenhouse to grow on until they are ready to move into a large final size pot or a growbag.
It’s worth noting that the 4 plants left in the greenhouse made the most of some slightly milder nights at the beginning of April and put on some decent growth. These larger plants appear to have survived the recent cold nights better than my young tomato seedlings which haven’t taken kindly to moving from indoor warmth to greenhouse cold.
I could now do with the cold nights to come to an end. I've seen forecasts suggesting it might be the middle of May before things start to warm up.
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I've lost five or six of my outdoor plants, I think it's ones I didn't harden off properly before planting out because I have a row of three of the same variety, two have died and the middle one is absolutely fine. Hoping for some warmth here too.
ReplyDeleteI notice the Met Office have summarised April as warm. Bet your tomato plants wouldn't.
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