I'm looking for some advice, and where better to pose a question than right here... It's about planting my tomatoes....
I have a bed which faces, roughly, south west, probably more south south west. In this bed I am going to plant two rows of tomatoes, each row containing 10 plants. I want to plant 10 plants each of two varieties.
I can't decide whether I'm better off planting 2 rows of 5 for each variety, or whether each variety should have a single row of ten plants.
What do you think? Please leave a comment with your suggestions and reasoning. It will be a great help to me.
Thanks
4 comments:
This answer has nothing to do with your question but it is about the wonderful varieties of tomatoes we grew this year.
Bob and I are " groupies' so we plant in clusters. I like smaller varieties at the front and then a variety of other taller tomatoes at the back.
We had twenty tomatoes in our small patch, you would be able to have a tomato forest.
Don't forget tomatoes love basil, we plant it all around the tomatoes.
This year we had great success with tomato riesentraube , waspipinnicon and our favorite St Pierre.
St Pierre is a french heirloom and produced brilliant red fruit and it is supposed to do well in poor conditions.
Riesentraube produced amazing bunches of delicious grape like tomatoes.
We also had loads of tomatoes from Franchi pomodora- red cherry. Franchi seeds are always good.
Deb from Nirvana says there her favorite and Diana has consistent success as well.
Happy gardening!
I think it depends on what varieties you are growing, Ian. If the two are similar in height, etc. I don't think it matters - they can be mixed or separate. If one variety is shorter than the other - eg. Roma, they can be planted in a row on the sunnier side. Here, because we have more worries about water than you have, we would plant the two rows together with a watering channel between them to make it easier to get lots of water to them. We've done this for the St Pierres, with the canes joined at the top to make a 'tent' shape. The Romas each have their own (shorter) cane and a water channel each side of the row.
One tip we had from our neighbours last year which worked well was to plant lettuces between the tomatoes or between the rows - the lettuces benefit from the water you give the tomatoes and you'll have eaten them by the time the tomato plants get too big and crowd them out. This year we've done this with courgettes too and both lettuces and courgettes seem to benefit from the arrangement.
Good luck with the tomatoes!
Thank you Maggie. For some reason I'm having terrible problems growing any basil this year, otherwise I would plant it around the tomato beds. I'm growing 7 varieties altogether this year including a red cherry tomato which I have grown from seed I saved. This year is the third year this variety has been grown here in my garden.
Hi chaiselongue,
I did make a watering channel down the middle and in the end planted them as groups, although in fact, when I checked, I didn't have enough plants......ooops So I'm growing Purple Ukraine, Veeroma, Geant, just 1 coeur de Boeuf, (don't ask...but the other one hadn't learnt to fly......, Ananas, Golden Sunrise and that red cherry which is now known as Ian's Red Cherry
I'll probably put some lettuces in between the plants as you suggest
Hi Ian, about tomatoes, have you try "Coeur de Boeuf"... wonderful! If you taste them you never forget to plant this variety in your garden... one of the best way to have excellente tomatoes is to plant just near them "oeillets d'Inde" sorry I don't know the English name ( I 'll try to find it). Have a good day in the garden
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