Just a little bit of sunshine and heat were enough to make my Tumbling Tom plants burst into flower. I got quite a surprise when I decided to repot them into their final containers yesterday - they were almost, but not quite, rootbound. It just shows that there can be a lot going on with plants that you we don't know about. I repotted them a little deeper, as I had seen on the Gardener's World programme with Monty Don. Tomato plants produce roots along buried stems so if your tomato plant is a bit leggy you can plant it more deeply with some of the leaves below soil level. I thought you had to remove the leaves but I didn't last year, and they were just fine.
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| Tumbling Tom Red |
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| Tumbling Tom Yellow |
I noticed last year and this year that the Tumbling Tom Yellow's have a different growth habit. They tend to be leggier than the rather squat Tumbling Tom Red's. At first I thought the idea of yellow tomatoes was a bit offputting. For some reason, I thought they would be less flavoursome than the reds but that's not the case. The yellow ones have a wow factor. I thought they were that bit sharper in flavour and I like that.
It only seems two minutes since I sowed the seeds of the cucumbers and courgettes and they are now growing well and yesterday I put them outside in the polytunnel where they stayed overnight. The young plants, growing in their 3 inch pots, are still protected by the ziplock plastic bags. Even though we are in late May, it is quite cold in a morning but when the sun works it's way around to them later this morning, I shall undo the bags. Apparently, you have to be careful with cucumbers, not to keep the soil too moist as they can get stem rot. So that's something to watch out for.
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| Courgette Sunstripe F1 hybrid & Cucumber Vega F1 hybrid |
