KEEP UP WITH TOMATO CARE

These simple steps will help plants to continue cropping

Everyone grows tomatoes, but they’re rather unusual crops because they keep growing while they’re cropping. This is a reason why we love them so much – they produce fruit for months. But it means they need lots of attention through summer, right up until the plants are pulled. The most popular are cordon (indeterminate) kinds that are grown as a single stem. The other kind is bush (determinate) tomatoes that don’t need support and tend to crop heavily over a short period.

Cordons continue to grow until stopped by cold weather. New trusses (clusters) of flowers and fruits carry on forming as the plant grows. Outside, you can expect a plant to produce and ripen four trusses of fruit, but one or two more in a greenhouse. Much will depend on the fruit size, with cherry toms producing more than large beefsteaks. Cherry varieties usually start to ripen the earliest.

To ensure plants continue to grow new fruit it’s essential to keep them well fed and watered. They’re ripening and producing more fruits so they need more feeding now than when they were small.

It’s warmth and not direct sun that ripens the fruits, so although you can remove a few lower leaves as they turn yellow, it’s not necessary or desirable to remove too many lower leaves and expose the fruits to the sun. This causes ‘green shoulder’, a green, hard area around the top of the fruit. Large-fruited varieties are more prone to this.