My Tomatoes Are Starting To Fruit

My tomatoes had grown so high that I had to tie some of them to the construction of my greenhouse roof. One of them fell down and was laying on the pot because its fruits had become so heavy. Now it is back in a vertical position tied and hanging like the rest.

Fruits on one of my tomato plants started getting ready to be picked. I picked the biggest and the most soft one of them. It looks ripened but has green skin at the stalk area. I remember from the last year that black tomatoes look like this even when they are very ripened. Yet I will wait a little while before eating it to check if the green area disappears. I want to make sure that I do not eat a green tomato. Now it is laying on the kitchen windowsill teasing me;) 

Most of my tomatoes are still very green

The most ripened tomatoes - Black Sea Man

Black Sea Man - weight 310 g. 

Everyday Care

My tomatoes are growing very fast and are quite high now. All of them started blooming some time ago and some already have little fruits. It does not mean I can relax now and wait until they are ready to be eaten. I have to take care of them almost every day.

So far they are my biggest tomatoes

The most important thing is watering. Tomatoes need regular watering. It does not mean one has to water them every day but it can be 2 - 3 times a week depends on the weather. Water should be poured directly to pots, not on leaves because they should not get wet. 

Another important thing is to help tomatoes pollinate. I do this by hand: I just shake a little the plants that have flowers and to make sure I touch every flower.

Tomatoes flowers fade some time after blooming and usually stay in this stage on growing fruits. Sometimes they fall down and land on the leaves. This can be dangerous because rotting flowers can affect the plants and that can lead to diseases. Therefore I pick the fading flowers and throw them away. I also pick yellow or damaged leaves.

Old flower

The other parts of my tomatoes I pick are suckers which grow between the stem and leaves. One theory says that they just take energy from the plant and do not give anything back. Another one says that one should leave them alone because they are OK. I do not want to have bushy tomatoes because it will be too dark in the green house at the end. Tomatoes need lots of sun so I pick the suckers and some big leaves when I see that it is getting too dark inside.

A sucker

I also give my tomatoes a natural fertilizer for tomatoes that supplies them with all mineral elements they need.

My greenhouse before I cut bushy leaves

My greenhouse now

Leaves removed from the plants

Moving Tomatoes To the Greenhouse

I transplanted my tomatoes to big pots and moved them to the greenhouse over a week ago. I did  not have time to write because it was much more to do in the garden and home than just taking care of the tomatoes and writing about them;).

First, I will write about the evil spider mites that attacked my plants. Before I received the spider mites removal I had washed affected leaves with water with soap using a sponge (they advice to do that when you find these creatures on your plants). That was definitely a mistake. Leaves did not survive this treatment. Probably they suffered more from this than from the spider mites;) I think it work with most plants but not all. I did it before with paprika and bananas plants and they were OK after that. Two days later I sprayed them with a special anti spider mites liquid and it helped. 

Tomatoes in the greenhouse

Before I moved the tomatoes to the greenhouse I let them stay outside during the day and inside at night for three days. It was supposed to harden them off. This is a very important step when you move tomatoes from a warm cozy place to much colder and harder conditions. Leaving them outside without hardening off can be a shock to them and it is not good at all. I kept my plants on the terrace where usually it is not too windy. The weather was not too sunny either which was also good. Unfortunately, it was more windy than I thought and two of my 24 plants broke just above the roots. Actually, three of them broke but I decided to keep the third one and transplant it anyway to check if it can regenerate. There was just a little bit of its skin connecting the stem and the root. One day after planting it it looked like it was dying. I wanted to throw it out at once so it would not start rotting and spreading diseases in the greenhouse but I was too lazy and I left it for the next day. When I came to the greenhouse on the next day it was alive! It looks healthier with every day. I guess it has developed new roots and everything is ok:)

Still alive and getting better:)

Last but not least - there is one little tomato growing on one of my plants:)

My first visible tomato:)

Alarm! Spider Mites Attack!

My tomatoes grow very fast and some of them have already cute little flower buds (!). The tomatoes are almost too high to maintain. Wooden sticks that are supposed to support them are much too short and they do not help much. Luckily the plants support each other now and only the ones that grow outside the crowd fall down a little. Soon I am moving them to the greenhouse where they will get real support. 

My tomatoes yesterday

flower buds

Unfortunately, there is a bigger problem than unstable plants... - my tomatoes have been attacked by spider mites. Spider mites are little evil creatures (less then 1 mm in size micro-spiders) that eat plants and build spider nets on them. I have noticed the first signs of their presence but I know they multiply extremely fast when they have good conditions so I have to stop them as soon as possible if I want to eat my own tomatoes this year. Last year they attacked my paprika plants. I had 5 or 6 paprika bushes and none of them survived because I did not use anything professional to fight the parasites. Spider mites spread over paprika plants very fast because they have smooth surface. Tomatoes have more hairy stems so these little creatures have problem with moving fast on them so they do not attack the whole plant at once. Spider mites prefer high temperature and drought so my tomato plantation is a real paradise for them. There is over 25 °C degrees (77 F) and dry air there because there are the best conditions for tomatoes too. Tomatoes should not grow in humid air because when their leaves stay wet they can develop various fungal diseases. Therefore I avoid pouring water on them while watering. 

attacked leaf

attacked leaf

spider mite on one of my tomatoes leaves

There is very little time to act. I have ordered a special organic anti spider mites product that is supposed to kill them without affecting the health of the other house residents. I ordered it on line so it will take some days for the parcel to come. So far I can only wash the plants with soap water. This should slow down multiplying of these awful creatures. I have to conduct this procedure in the morning so the tomatoes leaves can dry fast in the sun. I will write how everything worked after I see some results. I hope it works.

Supporting Tomatoes

Tomatoes grow fast and quite quickly become tall. When they grow indoors by a window they tend to turn to the sunlight which can cause that they bend and fall down because they are too heavy to keep standing in this uncomfortable position. It happened to a few of my plants. I used to turn them around to keep them in the straight position but it did not work in all cases and some of them collapsed anyway. This is an example of my laying tomato:

The longer time a tomato plant lays down on the ground, the more difficult is to lift it up again. I have read that one can actually replant a tomato in this position but the plant should be planted deeper then usually so the whole laying part stays around 10 cm underground. That helps to develop a stronger plant. I used to have such curvy tomatoes in the previous years but never replanted them this way. I must try this trick when I transplant my tomatoes to big pots.  We will see if they get stronger than the other plants. 

The part under the red line is going to be planted underground

I will write about it more when I transplant them in May. 

I decided to prevent my plants from further collapse. I used shishkebab sticks to support every plant. I pushed sticks in every pot and tied tomatoes to them with yarn. The tomatoes actually lean on their sticks so the yarn is only additional help in case the plants change position and form. 

Tomatoes with sticks

I´m glad that my tomatoes started growing fast after planting them in the pots filled with soil because it means they are healthy. On the other hand they are not going to be too tall by the middle of May ("thanks" to keeping them too long in the propagation cubes) when I move them to the greenhouse. It is not too easy to replant a big but still very fragile plant. 

Greenhouse

After I had realized that growing tomatoes outdoors in Sweden is not the best idea I decided to buy a greenhouse. I did it next spring. There are many kinds of greenhouses - from very advanced and big ones to very simple models. It might be tempting to have a big glass greenhouse which can be used also as a romantic room in the garden but not every one can or should have one. Not me. First of all I wanted something small that would not take too much space in the garden. I did not need tones of tomatoes because they were supposed to be eaten only by my family (mostly by me who is a tomatmonster). I just wanted something practical where I would be able to squeeze minimum 10-15 plants. I bought a simple model with a window in the roof. It is ca 2 m long and 1,5 m wide. The greenhouse is made of polycarbonate plastic which makes it childproof. A glass greenhouse would maybe look better but it could be easily broken by playing children. Plastic solves this potential problem. My polycarbonate greenhouse has also a UV protection layer. It blocks ultraviolet rays that can damage plants but let the "good" sunlight in. The window does not open automatically like in advanced models but it is not a problem to open it manually. Frankly speaking I keep it open almost the whole summer. I close it occasionally when it rains cats and dogs. Last year some of my tomatoes grew so tall that some of them "looked out" of that window.

The greenhouse arrived in a box. First, my husband (who is big and strong) made a foundation of concrete to make it stable and not able to fly in the wind. Then we put all parts together. When it was ready my husband made a path of concrete plates. It was very important because a natural path on the ground could easily become muddy. The concrete path stays dry and clean.

It is finally spring and my tomatoes have lots of sun. They started growing faster after planting them in little pots filled with soil. I will transplant them to big pots in the greenhouse in the middle of May. The picture below was taken last summer.

My concrete path and tomatoes in pots

Transplanting Tomatoes To Larger Pots

My little tomatoes did not feel comfortable in their tiny cubes. They developed long roots but their growth stopped. It was high time to transplant them to bigger pots. I remember that my last year´s plants  were bigger at the same age. I will rather use some sawing soil mix next time than propagation cubes. 

I transplanted my plants yesterday evening when it was only 2 °C degrees (35,6 F) so much too cold to keep my tomatoes outside. I did not want to conduct the whole procedure inside so first I prepared pots outside. I started with putting labels with number on the pots. The numbers correspond with the tomatoes sorts I planted. Before sawing my tomatoes I had prepared a numbered list of their sorts. When they get fruits I will know which is which. After putting the numbers labels on the pots I filled them with a special planting soil mix. It contained a natural fertilizer. I did not prepare the mix myself but bought it ready in my gardener´s store. When my pots were ready then I took the first tomato plant outside and planted it quickly before it got too cold. I had to be very careful because their roots were long I did not want to damage them too much as well as I had to make sure that the roots ends are in the right position and go down in the soil. Then I put the ready tomato pot back inside and placed it on a plastic tray. Every pot has a hole in the bottom to remove excess water from it. Therefore I needed the tray. I used it instead of many regular pot plates. I repeated this procedure with every tomato. Now I have 24 pots on 3 trays. After transplanting tomatoes to the new pots I carried them to the upstairs hall where they have very good conditions thanks to roof windows that let lots of the sunlight in. Tomatoes really need it. At the end I watered them with mild temperature water. They survived the whole process and went to sleep because it became dark:) Plants don´t like to be transplanted in a sunny hot weather because it makes them tired. They need some time to regenerate. I planted my tomatoes in the evening so the had the whole night to rest:) 

Today they look OK. I hope they feel good and will start growing fast. I plan to transplant them to very big pots around May, 15th.   

Plant ready to go to the new pot

My tomatoes today. Still alive;)