– Grow tomatoes for your home – Controlling sudden death syndrome in soya bean

Tall-growing, indeterminate tomato varieties make far more sense for the home grower, as they allow for extended harvesting over a long period. Bill Kerr discusses how to grow this type.

As mentioned last week, tall-growing (indeterminate) tomato varieties, where the plant continues to grow by producing new shoots, are better suited to home use.

Determinate varieties eventually make a truss in place of a new shoot. Vegetative growth stops and the plant uses all of its energy to fill out the fruit. This suits farmers who prefer a once-off harvest.

In contrast, home gardeners usually prefer to harvest over a long period for their own use rather than having more tomatoes than they can eat at any one time.

Tall-growing varieties must be staked. Use bamboo (or other) stakes or suspend twine from an overhead support such as a roof. This will allow you to plant on the sunny side of a building rather than be restricted to the vegetable patch.

Turn the plant around the twine so that the twine is under the point where the leaf emerges from the stem. Keep doing this until the entire plant is eventually coiled around the twine; this will support it all the way up.

If you use your vegetable patch, plant the tomato row on the south side so the tomatoes don’t shade out vegetables planted alongside.

the value of pruning

Prune when the side shoots are about 10cm long, leaving only the main shoot. People often think that pruning in this way loses yield potential. This is not so; an unpruned plant will set far less fruit, whereas pruned plants turn more flowers into fruit instead of aborting many of them. The quantity of fruit is determined by the amount of sunlight captured by the leaves, not the number of flowers that the plant bears.

Pruning results in a more open plant, which allows air to move through the leaves, reducing the potential for foliar diseases. In addition, a more open plant enables you to obtain full coverage when you spray for pests and diseases.

Contrary to what you might expect, pruning does not make the fruit more vulnerable to sunburn, as the fruit is constantly exposed to sunlight and adapts to it. Sunburn typically occurs when fruit covered by leaves suddenly becomes exposed to sunlight after the leaves are disturbed by picking.

how to keep birds away

Plant-ripened fruit is vulnerable to damage by birds. The threat is easily remedied, however: take suitable lengths of old stockings and pull these up over the trusses to protect them. The fruit can then be left to ripen safely on the plant until you require it.

These stocking sections can be kept and used every year.

• More on growing tomatoes next week.

BILL KERR ABOVE LEFT: Where convenient, the plant can be wound around suspended twine.

EARTH100 ABOVE:A tomato flower in full bloom, next to a young, green, developing fruit.