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Post by balc2 on Jul 8, 2022 15:40:03 GMT
balc2, are the plants dwarf,small fruited tomatoes, or maincrop, normal sized toms? They are maincrop, small fruited toms. They are 'Gardener's Delight' & should reach 2m or more in the open ground. Though this year is the first time I've ever grown them in growbags on the balcony I have grown them before when I had an allotment. I particularly like the taste of this tomato & that was why I chose to grow it this year.
I gave my son a couple of plants & they are doing fine. When I last saw them a couple of weeks ago they were starting to set fruit & were at least waist high. His plants weren't affected with "wilting" as mine were.
This "wilting" was something that I have never experienced before & I've grown many different varieties in growbags on the balcony over the last 21 years! I've also grown this variety on the allotment & never saw it there either. I never saw it either when I first started growing tomatoes on our balconies when we lived in Spain.
Whatever has caused this "wilting" doesn't seem to be affecting the new growth from the sideshoots. I even found my first pea size tomato when I was checking if the growbags needed watering (they didn't) this morning! Tomorrow I plan on watering them using a general fertilizer again to see if that will help them get a "leg up". I watered them with the same general fertilizer last Tuesday but I don't think it will hurt them to be fertilized twice in one week. As they haven't set any fruit yet I'm not going to give them tomato fertilize for a few more weeks. As we are expecting a hot week ahead the extra feeding should help them to grow more &, hopefully, produce more flowers!
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Post by balc2 on Jul 10, 2022 20:32:44 GMT
My toms seemed to have "bucked up their ideas" between the general fertilizer & the heat of the last few days they are growing almost visibly!No more signs of wilting on the new shoots! This is good news as I wasn't at all sure they would grow again. At one point I thought they would end up dying & I wouldn't get any tomatoes at all this year.
Some of the sideshoot can't be called that any longer as they are almost as thick as the original stem!  I've started wrapping the string around these stems once again &, all being well, I hope to be doing that every few days again! New flower buds should form during this week & even open, I hope!
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Post by Eli on Jul 14, 2022 2:46:04 GMT
I'm glad to know your tomatoes are growing properly again balc2 It was a good idea to use a side shoot.
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Post by balc2 on Jul 14, 2022 20:28:36 GMT
I have discovered a plant with at least 3 tomatoes on it!
The plants now look more like they should have done at least 6 weeks ago! I've lost that amount of time at least since they started "wilting"!
I should now get some ripe toms by the end of August - though the amount will be nowhere near what I was looking forward to! Oh well, at least there will be some & I'm growing them as a hobby really; we don't depend on the after all!
Today I fertilized them for the last time with a general flower fertilizer. On Saturday I will buy a bottle of tomato fertilizer & use that from next week.
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Post by balc2 on Jul 16, 2022 16:52:37 GMT
I bought the fertilizer but I shan't use it until Wednesday. I read somewhere that the excess of fertilizer during high temps is bad for the plants as it stops the proper uptake of water. The plants are really "rocketing" away now! Nearly all the plants have a few fruits but only 2 or 3 on each truss. There is only one truss at present on each plant but new buds are forming on the new growth, so there's hope for a harvest this summer after all! |
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Post by seaburn on Jul 16, 2022 19:45:34 GMT
any excess of fertilizer robs the cells of water. only make to the strength recommended.
I mentioned on a different garden forum a few weeks ago.
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Post by balc2 on Jul 17, 2022 20:10:47 GMT
Thanks for the confirmation, seaburn |
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Post by balc2 on Jul 19, 2022 20:19:57 GMT
It has been a terrible day on the balcony for my poor tomatoes! I went out on to the balcony this morning to check if any of my plants needed watering. I found the majority were OK but all the same I gave the tomatoes a little water. I didn't want to overdo it as I thought I might cause even bigger problems just when they have got back on their feet (well, roots!).
As it was so terribly hot I didn't go out on to the balcony until 7.30 this evening - but look what I found:
   
Of course i immediately gave them a little water! I didn't soak them well as I know that this can lead to the fruits splitting due to the influx of water. Before I go to bed this evening I will give them some more & hope they pick up during the night. But as we are in for another very warm, tropical night, of over 20C again I don't know if they will pick up very well.
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Post by seaburn on Jul 21, 2022 6:43:37 GMT
don't forget their origins are from South America and their genetics hasn't changed that much so this heat isnt unusual for them. it really is the water supply. So they will recover given little and often. That tends to be a problem with grow bags sadly.
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Post by balc2 on Jul 23, 2022 14:45:18 GMT
Thanks for that seaburn but what has happened to them is not lack of water, I watered them earlier in the day, rather the leaves were burnt by the brutal hot wind we had all day on Tuesday. We reached 39C here, but on the balcony itself it may well have been even higher due to being in full sun from 11am till the sun sets.It was the hot wind that scorched the foliage that did the damage.
After waiting for a few days, to give the plants a chance to recover from the heat stress on Monday & Tuesday, I finally used the tomato fertilizer for the first time this year. I hope we have no repeat of the extreme temps of Monday & Tuesday again this summer & that it was a one off phenomenon otherwise I will likely lose the few fruits that have formed. I did notice that the fruits already formed seem to be growing in size once again. There were a few more flowers again today so perhaps not all is lost yet!
Two of the 12 plants couldn't resist the high temps & burning wind & are practically dead now.  The rest seem to be starting to recover.
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Post by daitheplant on Jul 24, 2022 19:47:17 GMT
Apparently, most people are having problems with Tomatoes.
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Post by balc2 on Jul 24, 2022 20:14:11 GMT
I checked on the toms this morning & tapped a few flowers to get them to set. While I was at it I counted the tiny toms out of curiosity! Out of 10 surviving plants I have a gran total of ... (drum-roll, please) ... 7 toms!  |
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Post by balc2 on Jul 25, 2022 16:47:07 GMT
"They are 'Gardener's Delight' & should reach 2m or more in the open ground. Though this year is the first time I've ever grown them in growbags on the balcony I have grown them before when I had an allotment."
I made a mistake when I wrote that as I found out a week ago. I DID grow them on the balcony but back in 2014! I did a search through my photos stored in GPhotos & found I had grown them on the allotment & on the balcony the same year. I also found pictures of a tomato called 'Sunstream'. This was a small heart-shaped plum tomato. Very sweet, if memory serves me well!
We had this tomato as a substitute from a supermarket shop at Christmas 2014. As I liked the taste of the tomatoes I saved the seeds from one fruit before we finished eating them. Later in the year I sowed them in the greenhouse on the allotment. They were VERY vigorous seedling & later the plants but they had zero resistance to blight! I had 1000s of fruits on the vines when they were struck down!! I wanted to cry at seeing the devastation! I also lost a whole bed of "Gardener's Delight' to blight at the same time yet remarkably ONE plant that was not in the the bed with the rest got blight but recovered & even gave me some fruit!
   
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Post by balc2 on Jul 25, 2022 16:51:09 GMT
These are some of the pictures of 'Gardener's Delight' growing on our balcony in July 2014:
  
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Post by balc2 on Aug 2, 2022 16:51:07 GMT
My poor 'Gardener's Delight' tomatoes are still very much struggling. They should be at least half as much again taller than what you see here. The 2 plants I gave my son are taller than me & have lots of trusses set. One truss has even got a tom starting to redden! Whereas I only have about 10 toms scattered around the 10 surviving plants. There are some flowers once again so all is not lost.
Here are a couple of photos of them I took yesterday:
 
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I've started wrapping the string around these stems once again &, all being well, I hope to be doing that every few days again!
The rest seem to be starting to recover. 
