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Veteran
Posts: 275
 
| Maggie very kindly gave us a marmande tomato plant. According to the catalogues, it's a bush variety, as opposed to vine. Does that mean I shouldn't pinch out the shoots between stem and leaf? And I'm wondering whether to try to give it enough space on the windowsill (not a problem just now, but I'm not sure how big it's likely to get) or should I get it used to the idea of living outdoors? |
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Veteran
Posts: 214
| Yes it should be a bush and outdoor type. Grew some in polytunnel last summer and they cropped reasonably but tend to be later than varieties like Gardeners Delight, Red Alert. Needs a good summer and / or a sheltered warm spot to do well outdoors here.
You'd need a big pot and very big windowsill so better to find a cosy warm spot outside. Get it potted / planted into its final place now and you should get a crop. The plants tend to get straggly, will need staking, and once it starts to set fruit it will be worth pinching out new shoots but you don't need to be religious about that or train it up strings. |
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Regular
Posts: 62
| Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly do you mean by 'pinching out' new shoots? Just as it sounds, and where do these new shoots appear?
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Veteran
Posts: 275
| As far as I can see, they're similar to vine tomatoes, but don't grow as tall - so the shoots come out between the leaves and the main stem. I guess the issue is to stop the plants putting all their effort into producing new shoots, and concentrate on the bits we're interested in, i.e. the tomatoes. So you just pinch or twist out the shoots before they get going. |
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Extreme Veteran
Posts: 319
| Most gardening advice suggests pinching out all side shoots and the main shoot once 3 trusses of tomatoes have started to form. I tend to sometimes push this a bit and try to get a few more tomatoes per plant, but I think this is about right for growing outside here. Commercial growers tend to have strings going right up to the ceiling but I suspect use a lot of fertiliser. Being a bit too optimistic with my inside ones last year meant that we had the last straggly tomatoes eventually maturing about Christmas, but they did get there if they were in the heated part of the house. The unheated conservatory ones did badly although they were the best earlier on. Peppers were also variable in maturity but that did mean we had fresh peppers for New Year! |
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Marmande tomato