No-one grows tomatoes on our allotment. The savage cruelty of blight turns all toms to mush and, unlike spuds, there’s no hope of salvage. So I normally make do with a few plants in my garden.
Were it not for blight*, tomatoes would be one of the most forgiving crops to grow. I sowed my seeds a few weeks ago and left them to germinate on the windowsill where they quickly shot up and got ‘leggy’, seeking out our meager doses of late winter sunshine. But whereas gangly growing seedlings spell trouble for most veg, the tomato doesn’t give a damn – you can simply pot them on, burying the stems to the base of the leaves and they’ll sprout strong new roots underground.
In fact, their propensity for propagation is so great that you can even take cuttings from the tips of established plants to easily multiply your tomato bounty.
*And a lack of summer.
Seeds sown: Mr. Fothergill’s tomato ‘garden pearl’
Yes! They are pretty incredible… I replanted a pinched out side-shoot from one of mine last year as an experiment and before long it was more or less indistinguishable from the ‘proper’ plants!!
So you’re saying the new plant was quick to ketchup? (ketch / catch / geddit? Ah. Sorry)