Tomato Growth.

 

It is now five weeks since I planted the tomato plants in their rings in the greenhouse. At that stage they were probably about eight inches high. Since then they have put on more than two feet of growth. I am always surprised at how quickly tomatoes grow. I shouldn't be. It's not that they are catching me unawares. After all I have been growing them for almost fifty years. But there is something so luxuriant and vigorous in their growth that never ceases to amaze me.

The plants have all thrown their third trusses and the lower trusses have begun to set their fruit. I will now have to start feeding them. Every three or four days I have been removing the side shoots so as to ensure that all the plants' energy goes into strong vertical growth and the setting of more fruit. Although I have what would be described as a large domestic greenhouse it doesn't have the height to allow me to get more than six trusses per plant even from the row next the central path. At the present rate of growth I would expect to be nipping out the leaders by the middle of July by which time the first fruit should be just about ready to pull. Tomato sandwiches beckon.