Tomatoes Ready For Planting Out

Now I feel really guilty this year… I bought my Tomato & Cucumber plants from B&Q! In the past I’ve always been loyal to our local garden centres, but this year a 2 for 1 offer or some such thing caught my eye and I grabbed half a dozen. Anyway, they’re quite stocky specimens so they should do ok. I’ve been hardening them off a bit by leaving them outside during the day for the last week, so now the green house is ready, In they go!

The Tomatoes

We’ve got three types of tomato going in this year, Moneymaker, Gardeners Delight and on other who’s name escapes me.

• Moneymaker is an excellent tomato for the Home Gardener. High yielding and producing medium sized fruit. It will also grow equally well outdoors as in a green house. Providing it’s in a very sunny position that is, to get the fruit to ripen nicely.

• Gardeners Delight is another high yielding variety, this time giving nice bite sized fruit with plenty of flavour. Again these can be grown indoors or out.

I’ll check the third variety when I let the chickens out in a bit!

Tomato Plants In Position

Hopefully with the tomato plants being in the greenhouse this year, we’ll get a better crop and better ripening than we did last year in our old garden.

Here You Can Just See Vertical String Tomato Supports... Hope they work!

To support the tomatoes, I’m trying the vertical string method. The description on the back of the label with the tomatoes is a bit vague, so I’ve just dangled strings down to the plants for now. I’m not sure if they grab hold of them as they grow, or if I need to wrap the string round the plants as they grow I’m not quite sure… a bit of Googling needed maybe!

The strings are supported by a horizontal wire at the minute, but I know the plants are going to get heavy as we progress into summer so a stronger support is most likely needed here. I’ll get my thinking cap on.

The Cucumber

We’ve gone for one, heavy cropping cucumber this year to see how we get on. I grew a cucumber plant outdoors a couple of years a go and it did ok, but I neglected it a bit, so this time I’m going to try and do it properly! I’ve followed Alys Fowler’s tip when planting it out which is to plant the cucumbers root ball so it’s slightly raised or mounded up. Cucumbers are prone to rotting off if they sit with water around their stems. Mounding them up apparently stops this, so thank you Alys for that tip! I’ve also started to make a basic cucumber support to keep the fruits off the ground once it gets going. I’ll post that shortly.

A Handful Of Radishes

You can’t been home grown radishes on a Salad, so I’ve left room in front of the tomatoes on both sides of the greenhouse to get a few radishes going. They’re a fast growing crop, from seed to plate in 4 to 6 weeks. They’re easy to sow and grow too, which is handy. Just make a 1.5cm deep trench or drill with the end of a trowel or hoe. Sprinkle the seeds in. I left about 3/4 of an inch between each seed to save me thinning them later. Cover them over and give them a good watering (with a bit of Miracle Grow for good measure). I only sowed half a row for now, I’ll sow some more in a fortnights time to give me a continuous crop for as long as possible. Fingers crossed by mid may I’ll have home grown radishes about ready to eat.