wayland
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Hows your Toms?I have some stonking tomato plants but they have to come out of the cloche soon as they are getting a bit high. Keep away Jack Frost 
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wayoutwest
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if you have some bubble wrap and spare bamboo canes, make a circle of the canes, wrap the bubble wrap around them, then another circle to squeeze the wrapa a bit... it kind of gives them a bit of extra care once they're out - like a half way house!
come larger businesses have bubble wrap to chuck away, it's sometimes worth asking.
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wayland
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A good idea but I have 60 Providing I get me planning sorted withine a few weeks all will be fine. I hope.
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Moonwaves
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Well, I seem to be way behind everyone else in just about everything. I finally got three of my attempts to grow tomatoes starting to look like proper plants. They had been potted on into a bigger pot which they were starting to outgrow so last weekend I finally potted them out into the hanging basket which they should grow from. They're tumbler tomatoes, small ones which should be grown in hanging baskets. So, all set with my three small plants in said basket I thought it would be best to spend a couple of days hardening them off before leaving them outside (in the only spot in the garden which gets sun almost all day) for good. Arrived home from work yesterday evening to bring them in and they were just a bit shrivelled and on two of them some of the leaves had shrivelled quite badly and gone almost completely white.
I watered very well and brought in overnight and they seemed to recover somewhat but is there something I'm missing that I should be doing? Since none of my other tomato seedlings survived I'm going to give in and buy some plants from the garden centre as well but I'd really like these ones I've grown from seed to grow.
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tringle
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I got seed for tumblers aswell and they are very slow, only about 5" high. so I did give in and went to the garden centre. With only a plastic cold frame I got 4 plants 9still hoping he others will come on), 1 tumbler, 1 beefsteak and two gardeners delight. They are in pots in the cold frame but have hit the top. I raised the cold frame up on blocks and will get another few days but the beefsteak will need to be staked now and so will have to come out. Even though they have no flowers or rruit yet when I open the cold frame in the morning the scent of tomatoes is really strong. I put a basil plant in each pot so the overall scent is great.
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GB
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Mine are only 8 inches high but they have flowers on so fingers crossed.
And Moonwaves, it sounds like they got a bit of sun burn as well as a bit dry, you might try starting them off in light shade when hardening them off and moving them to sun gradually.
They should come back alright though, toms are tough 
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wayland
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I had to give most of me Toms away but I do have 18 in pots which look fine at the moment.
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wayland
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I now have fruit set. As my Toms have to endure outside again this year they dont look too bad. With all this wet weather blight may well rear its ugly head, but ok at the moment.
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GB
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Dismal 
they did flower but no fruit set and they are still only 12 inches high. If this weather keeps up they havnt a snowballs chance of even giving back their purchace price 
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Moonwaves
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I gave in and bought two plants a couple of weeks ago and then two more last weekend. Also bought a couple of tomato tents. I put the hanging basket with my one good plant grown from seed (and one that looked like it had given up the ghost) into the tent as well. I planted the two plants I bought into a long window box type container and added in a few of my seedlings around the bottom just to see if they'd do anything. They're all growing and two of my seedlings are doing really well (well, they're about five inches tall now but everything is relative). The tumbler plant which I thought had given up has completely revived and is growing well. No fruit yet but I'm still hopeful - if the weather would just improve for a couple of weeks. The two plants I bought at the weekend have now gone into bigger pots in the second tent. They were already a few feet high when I bought them with a few small fruit showing - it remains to be seen if they were just too rootbound or if they'll revive a bit as well (got them for a euro each - they were huge plants in tiny pots). I've planted out the rest of my seedlings as well to see how they do.
At the moment I have two seedlings growing into decent plants but they're right beside each other. I presume I should take one out to leave room for the other? Is there a way to do that without killing it entirely?
It's all been a bit of a learning curve (and not over yet) but even if I only get a few small green tomatoes it's a start and every bit of knowledge helps for next year. 
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tringle
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Mine are dead. Rain killed them aoff while I was on holidays. I had left instructions for them to be watered and then it rained non stop, I didnt leave instructions for what to do when they are under a foot of water
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wayland
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Sorry to hear that. Mine are suffering a bit now. Not through the rain as they are under the eves but lack of sunshine. There are loads of fruit forming but we need sunshine me thinks. If you plant tumbler tomes now you will still get a crop this year. They mature quickly.
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tringle
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I might try that, though not sure now if we will get enough sunshine
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wayland
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Well I have to say it. My toms are rubbish . The plants look fine with plenty of flowers but the fruit is very small and ripening. I have practically spoon fed them to no avail...... In the poly tunnel next year me thinks.
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blowin
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We had the first ripe ones from our polytunnel a couple of days ago . This is much later than one would normally expect but is about the same as last year --- probably due to our cultivation technique which is best described as "benevolent neglect" .
For reasons which I won't go into I urgently had to hide a large pile of very fresh pig manure so I chucked it into one end of the poly T , 6" manure then 6" soil until I had a bed about 2 ft deep . Left the hosepipe running on it for a day then , before I could decide what to plant on it , a jungle of toms took over . There were several different varieties / growth habits and the whole lot got into a really dense tangle so I pinched all the tops out at about 3 ft before I decided it was a complete waste of time then did nothing else .
The whole lot collapsed into a dank heap with rotting leaves and stems . We got a few toms from around the edges .
Some weeks after everyone else seems to have pulled up their plants ( and got sick of green tomato chutney ) I started to clear the 5" deep carpet of debris and found pounds of perfectly preserved toms beneath it . Interestingly they ranged from green to very ripe but still very firm , which were some of the sweetest I have ever tasted . Left undisturbed the green ones ripened perfectly over a peiod of several weeks .
That was last year . The jungle self-seeded and reappeared this year so we'll see what happens . Could be onto a winner for a change !
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wayland
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We had a delivery of sewage waste when we lived on the farm . Great lorry loads of the stuff. It stayed in a heap all winter, the following spring brought a forrest of Tomes. The best ever. It was a shame to drive the front loader into it. Did anything else come up?
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GB
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Oh please, please go into why you had to hide a large pile of pig manure  it boggles the mind trying out scenarios 
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wayland
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LOL 
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blowin
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It boggled more than my mind because I only had 1/2 an hour to shift about a ton of the stuff .
But I can't go into detail in case the man I was hiding it from is reading this too .
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wayland
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Despite the Farmers delight getting a bad case of blight, all is not completely lost with me Toms. The Roma is now cropping well. If only they would ripen. I have never grown these before and they seem to be unaffected by the blight. Fingers crossed.
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blowin
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Well, my jungle ( see prev post ^^ ) is twice the size of last year due to twice the amount of neglect in that area . I have been picking toms for the past 4 weeks now and there are plenty still to come . Predictably some of them have hybridised . The flavour of the normal sized ones is a bit disappointing those which are mostly cherry type are very sweet. They are stunning when used whole in cooking -- particularly if you fry them first , when they turn out something like sun-ripened toms in both flavour and texture . No sign of blight or mould , either , altho they are so dense there can't be any air circulation between them .
The yield per plant is very low but the yield per square foot of ground is reasonable . Not as many as you would get from properly spaced specimens but not bad for a self-seeded , zero-maintenance crop .
I wonder why it should seem so surprising that plants can actually produce fruit without human intervention
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