Essential Survival Gear Catalog

If you are in a cool climate, then growiing tomatoes in a cold greenhouse is really the only way to ensure a reliable heavy crop of ripe tomatoes. It is really quite easy to grow tomatoes in your greenhouse. You can either raise your own plants from seed, or buy young plants from a garden centre.

When raising your own plants from seed you need to sow the seed early, which probably means sowing your seeds indoors before the last frosts have finished. Sow three seeds in each 3″ pot and place on a warm windowsill which gets good light.
Make sure that they do not dry out. Once they have germinated and the worst of the frosts are over, transfer the pots to the greenhouse. Grow them on until the plants are well established in the pots, but before the roots begin to circle in the pot. The soil should be retained by the roots and a god network of root show. If you leave them too long in the 3″ pots, they will become root-bound, and will take much longer to re-establish ehen transplanted. You should then separate the three plants and re-pot each one into a 5″ pot. Grow them on till they fill this pot. Now you need to decide how and where you are going to grow them. If you decide to grow them in growbags, then they should be planted no more than three to a grow bag. However, I have found that they grow rather better in deeper pots than a grow bag. One successful technique is to cut a growbag in half and stand each half on end, with one plant in each. This will give you a much deeper root run. I usually now grow my tomatoes in large pots in a good homemade compost.

As you put your plants into their permanent position, consider supports for them. They will want good support up to the roof of your greenhouse. A good way of doing this is to tie a 6ft bamboo cane to the roof of your greenhouse and put it into the pot as you plant your tomatoes.The plants will become very heavy when laded with fruit so canes will need to be supported from the roof of the greenhouse

Tie the plants to the canes as they grow. Remove side shoots which grow from each leaf joint when they are still small. Watch them gro and produce fruit, keeping them always watered. Make sure the plants are watered evenly and that they never dry out. Uneven watering can cause greenback – which makes the fruit go black at the bottom and makes them inedible. Always remove any damaged or infected fruit and make sure the plant it watered correctly. They will usually recover. I give my tomato plants about 2 pints of water each day, although cherry tomatoes such as gardeners delight only need 1.5 litres (3 pts) of water a week.This makes the fruit taste sweeter.

When the plants start to flower. spray them with water once a day so that they have humid conditions. You should also gently shake the plant to move the pollen about. Remove all the leaves below the lowest fruiting truss. This increases the air flow and also the rise of the sap. At this point start feeding with liquid seaweed. (Tomato feed purchased from garden centre is equally good.). Some people also feed epsom salts because they say that it makes the tomatoes ripen earlier.This has not been proven, and is in any case unnecessary in a diy cool greenhouse.

Pick the fruit regularly, Fresh young fruits are always the sweetest and picking encourage the production of more fruit.

Tomatoes are one of the easiest greenhouse crops and are very rewarding, reliably giving a heavier crop of ripe clean and healthy tomatoes than you could grow outside.