Jamie’s Little Allotment: Gayton gardener discusses how to care for your tomato plants

In his weekly column, Gayton gardener Jamie Marsh discusses how to care for tomato plants…

Is it really August already?

I don’t understand how this year is slipping away so fast. Of course, if the year is running away with us, then so is the summer, but what I’ve got my fingers crossed for is a bit of an extended summer or an Indian summer.

Especially how summer started so wet and cold I think we, and the garden, deserve it.

There are a few things that actually need it, let alone want it. My tomatoes and cucumbers both need as much sunshine as possible as they originally come from South America and Mexico. Whereas we all know they have a plentiful supply of sunshine and heat.

This is the reason why my 24 different varieties of tomatoes that are growing in the greenhouse are so far behind.

It was definitely the late start to the summer, I must admit things have started to take off this last week or two.

The plants have grown well and fruit has started to appear. It is always a momentous moment seeing how tomatoes are my favourite things to grow, I can’t wait to be able to have freshly picked tomatoes in five minutes, sliced on a thick piece of homemade sourdough toast for breakfast.

Before that happens they have to grow, and to grow healthy tomato plants and produce lots of amazing tomatoes, you need several things.

We’ve already discussed that they need lots of sunshine and heat.

Also regular watering, for a few reasons, for a plant to grow it needs water, but with tomatoes, it has to be done regularly.

If you let the compost dry out, apart from the obvious dying plant, if you have fruit on the vines and you let it dry out, when you next water, the fruit will suck up excess water and split. the other reasons to make sure you keep your plants moist is you may get blossom end rot.

Blossom-end rot is easily identified as a brown, leathery rot developing on or near the blossom end of the tomato.

It is caused by a calcium deficiency in the fruit. Many people think it is caused because there’s a lack of calcium in the actual growing medium but it is very rare for soils, grow bags or potting composts that lack calcium.

There is almost always plenty in the soil and indeed within the plant.

However for calcium to reach the parts of the plant that are furthest from the roots there needs to be a good flow of water through the plant.

When you let the plant dry out, the fruit cannot utilise the calcium which would normally be brought to them in the water.

If you do get any tomatoes with blossom end rot, you can easily cure it by upping your watering.

One more thing we need to do to produce lots of lovely tomatoes is feed the plants. When you see they have started to produce flowers that’s when you need to start feeding it.

There are so many specific tomato feeds out there you can’t really go wrong, most of the manufacturers say on the back of the bottle to feed once a week, that is where I differ.

I always think that hungry plants like tomatoes need more feeding than just once a week, so what I do is feed at every watering, but at half strength, that way there’s always food at the roots.

If you follow these rules you should grow some beautiful tomatoes which will knock the socks off any supermarket ones.

While we are talking about feeding, everything could do with a good feed at least once a week this time of year. I’m not just talking about your edibles, I’m also talking about your ornamentals.

All the plants, flowers and veggies are growing at a ridiculous rate and will soon run out of nutrients, I use an organic seaweed feed for everything else other than my tomatoes.

Feeding everything on a regular basis will give you much better crops and bigger and better blooms.

Email me at Jamieslittleallotment@gmail.com if you have any questions about your garden or if you want to share your garden stories with me.