My Families Experience with Tomatoes

Personally I am not overly fond of the things unless they are fried, roasted or stuffed though my dad loves them so much he cannot have a meal with ought them the same with my granda too, so me and my mother for the last few years have been trying our hand at growing them, without much success unfortunately. Though we don't have any means of a greenhouse and we do live in Northern Ireland so the weather can be quite wet and unpredictable.


Growing experience:

What we used:
Grow bags
Compost
Plant feed
Lots of water
Fillings for grow bags
Alternative upside down plant hanging bags
Pots
Tomato seeds
Tomato plants

Firstly my dad prefers big tomatoes so we have been trying to grow them in grow bags both from scratch or seed and also from plants purchased from garden centres. The first year we tried them it rained perpetually all summer and despite the plant gaining a nice woody frame they all split and caught plight any fruit we did manage to get also split, so it wasn't a great success.

In the same year we also planted the salad or miniature tomatoes I am pretty sure they were called tumbling tomes and money makers we had them in regular pots and regular hanging baskets they were far more successful but about half the size of the store bought alternative. They did taste lovely and sweet however and we had them in salads.

In the second year we grew the larger tomatoes once more, we did manage to get to harvest time without anything disastrous happening to the plants themselves, again growing them in grow bags, but the tomatoes never ripened so we couldn't eat them raw, so we ended up with about a year of tomato chutney out of that crop which wasn't so bad really.

This year we also tried growing the miniatures in an alternative fashion in that they grow out the bottom of what looks like a short stubby green reusable shopping bag and hand downward as this year my mother wanted flowers in the hanging baskets. These provided to be quite successful and we had more normal salad tomatoes this year which were just as good if not better than the supermarket variety.
This year we are having a similar story with our large tomatoes, they are big but remain ever green as we are running out of sunlight and the weather is turning, so it seems we will have more tomato chutney.
The small tomato varieties haven't done at all this year and we really don't know why, it's been a funny year for growing over all as we usually can't grow parsnips at all and this year we have had maybe 4kg and they taste amazing, so who knows what's happening with the weather and global warming at the minute.


Conclusion

To grow and produce really red and large tomatoes I think you really need a green house or to have a slightly warmer climate of which we are never going to have but at least our potatoes and rhubarb and courgettes grow like mad here.