There’s a bit of a forest growing in the greenhouse and it’s mostly made up of greenhouse tomatoes. I used to grow a fair few tomatoes outside in the garden but blight put a stop to that as I got fed up with nurturing the plants to harvest and then losing the lot to the Black Death.
Greenhouse tomatoes are better protected from the spores of this dreadful fungus and crop a bit earlier so if the plants do succumb at least you can harvest some of the crop.
Of course you can choose to grow blight resistant varieties and I do do this, but I don’t want to be restricted to a few varieties, the wonder of tomatoes is the huge, eclectic choice from black and stripy to red, yellow and orange, each one has it’s own lineage and followers.
At the moment there is a mini trial going on in the greenhouse, with grafted and ungrafted plants.
I’ve been sent a selection from three different growers this season and now there are twenty or more tomatoes growing on in the greenhouse.
They are establishing well and thriving on a diet of seaweed food which I am using at the moment to support their growth, some plants are already in flower and as soon as they start to set fruit I will swap over to a tomato feed to support their fruit production.
Grafted plants have been available for a while and are a great choice if you grow your plants in the same greenhouse soil each year. They have been grafted onto a rootstock that gives the plants a stronger root system better able to resist soil borne pathogens, TMV (Tomato Mosaic Virus), corky root rot and verticillium.
The root system also delivers more nutrients to the plants, which helps with their growth and development. Last year I grew some from Suttons and had great results with bowlfuls of tasty tomatoes all season.
This year I am growing some organic grafted plants from Delfland Nurseries (01354 740553; www.organicplants.co.uk) and and some more from Suttons (www.suttons.co.uk), including some aubergines and also some from another supplier.
Grafted plants are available at Garden Centres.
Watch this space for their progress.
