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Greenhouse or outdoors for growing tomatoes?

Give your greenhouse a good wash down before planting to maximise light transmission and get rid of disease spores.

Late (potato) blight can damage or even kill outdoor tomatoes and spoil the fruits before you can harvest them, but it is less of a problem if you grow your plants in a greenhouse or polytunnel. If you have to grow outside, choose the sunniest spot you can find (e.g. in front of a south-facing wall). There are also a few varieties which are more blight-tolerant; we have selected six of the best for our Blight-tolerant Outdoor Tomato Collection.

Tomatoes will not stand a frost – keep your seedlings indoors or in a heated greenhouse until the risk of frost has passed – sometime in May for most areas, but check your local weather forecast.

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Know (and grow) your onions

Here is a list of ideal growing conditions for onions:

  • Full sun
  • Fertile, thoroughly dug, well-prepared soil
  • Ideally apply manure several months before planting as growth is too lush if the soil is freshly manured
  • Wood ash is good for onions, but not ash from coal fires
  • Good drainage is essential
  • Check pH – ideally 6.5 or above for mineral soils, 5.8 for peaty soil
  • Don’t grow in the same bed more than one year in four
  • If you are bringing/buying-in soil check that it doesn’t come from a place where onions have been grown in the past, or you might get white rot or other diseases and pests.  Commercially, onions are grown on silty, sandy loam or peaty soil; you should definitely avoid heavy soil (high clay content) and stones
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Andy’s Mum’s poorly tomato plant

Agony Plant advised:

‘The compost looks very wet. This could be because your Mum is too generous with her watering, or the compost doesn’t drain well, or both.

If you can get a terracotta pot, slightly bigger than the one it’s in now that would be ideal, because the pot will evaporate water unlike a plastic one. Fill the gap between the rootball and the new pot with fresh compost – try to get a multi-purpose peat-free compost with added bark.

Put the pot on something to raise it slightly above the ground. Then start feeding with a liquid tomato feed, according to the instructions on the bottle, but don’t let the compost get saturated.

Tomatoes are tough plants so it should recover.’

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second assessment 13 Aug 2013

John made the second assessment today: number of cells per tray with no germination or very small/abnormal seedlings. 

The average number per tray varied with crop, but this may not be significant:

Lettuce       3.9
Chinese cabbage         8.9
Cabbage         9.2

The differences between the growing media were small, apart from No.3 which was much worse for lettuce and cabbage.  No single medium is a clear winner over all three test crops, so far.

                                best           worst
Lettuce

   4

                  1,2,6 very close second             

 

3

–
Chinese cabbage

                                 8

–

            1 

3 very close second
Cabbage                                  8             3

 Click on the images of the trays to enlarge them and view as a slide show.

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Samples taken for analyses

7 Aug 2013

I’ve taken samples of each growing medium to send off today.  Each sample is about 2 litres, consisting of about 20 sub-samples.

The following tests will be carried out:

Extraction according to BSEN13040 2000 [1:5]
Includes Dry Matter, Bulk Density, Dry Density, pH, Conductivity, Nitrate-N and Ammonium-N with calculated soluble N, Chloride, Sulphate, Potassium, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Calcium, Sodium, Iron, Manganese, Zinc, Copper and Boron.

A low conductivity is desirable for good germination.  A modest amount of water-soluble Nitrogen makes it easier to control the growth of brassica plants.

13 Aug 2013

The results came back today – there are large ranges for each nutrient e.g.

pH   6.4 – 8.0
Conductivity μS/cm    215 – 727
Total soluble Nitrogen mg/l      16 – 451
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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first germination assessment

John made the first germination assessment today. Seed showing any sign of germination was counted, though some may not make the grade at the next assessment.

The average number of seeds per tray not germinated varied with crop, but this may not be significant:

Lettuce         4.86
Chinese cabbage         5.92
Cabbage         7.72

The differences between the growing media were small, apart from No.3 where germination was much worse for lettuce and cabbage.  No single medium is a clear winner over all three test crops, so far.

        best        worst
Lettuce     1,4,9             3
Chinese cabbage           8             1
Cabbage           2             3

 Click on the images of the trays to enlarge them and view as a slide show.

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trays laid out in greenhouse

trays laid out in greenhouse

Monday 5 August 2013

Today we laid out all the trays in the greenhouse.  They are raised on plastic pots to ‘air-prune’ the roots and stop them from ramifying underneath the trays and tangling up; this would make it difficult to pull the plants from the modules at planting time.

The trial is divided into three main blocks according to plant type:

Lettuce

Chinese cabbage

Spring cabbage

Within each crop there are four rows each containing one tray of each growing medium.

After the trial was laid out, it was given its first watering with plain water. In 7-10 days we will assess the germination/emergence. Meanwhile we will send off samples of unused compost for nutrient analyses.