Reflections on tomato growing

We only grow cherry plum tomatoes - or that’s the plan at least: we’ve also been given some bigger, fleshier tomato plants, and are now waiting for them to ripen.  All are grown outside on a south-facing terrace. The wind got up in the night and blew over some of the smaller pots in which we’ve been growing the little chaps from cuttings, so I went out earlier to collect the windfalls, and pick all that were ripe.  That crop ran to 600g, qv.  We’re hoping that trimming the sails and watering well will keep them standing now.  The pickings from the six parent plants brought this morning’s crop up to 1.375kg.  That’s a lot of cherry tomatoes!

As I’ve probably mentioned before, Annie heard Bob Flowerdew say on Gardeners’ Question Time a while ago that you only need one tomato plant per variety, since the side shoots root easily.  Given that our preferred variety, Sweet Olive, comes in not inexpensive packets of six to eight seeds, this seemed worth a try: ever a fan of owt for nowt, I’ve experimented, and here’s what we’ve found (though we hear that results are less good with other varieties):

• Side shoots root in water, which is fun to watch, or directly in compost.
• Direct rooting in in compost is probably better, since those rooted in water wilt a bit when potted up (they do recover well).
• Cuttings grown in big pots of the size used for the parent plants perform just as well, and extend the cropping season.
• Cuttings grown in smaller pots, hence less well fed and watered, produce just as much fruit, but smaller. 

We might grow some bigger fleshy tomatoes next year, depending how a certain recipe turns out.  More anon, maybe.