Some lessons I have learned the past few years growing tomatoes in pots outside (by which I mean I sow and grow in small pots inside, but when they reach final potting up stage they live outside as soon as the weather is warm enough):
1. Black Cherry does much better with an early sowing – last year I sowed in mid March and was struggling to get ripe fruit oustide whereas this year, sowing in early February, the glut started at the beginning of August.
2. I”ve had brilliant yields off Maskotka plants sown either in the first week of February (this year) or the last week of April (last year) – they are one of the quickest, easiest tomato strains to grow in pots.
3. This year I tried Apero and Sungold sown at the beginning of April and Apero was clearly more vigorous in terms of yield, athough both tasted excellent. At the very end, both started to get signs of blight, so I removed all remaining fruit green and ripened indoors.
4. I’ve been sowing Riesentraube earlier each year and getting more yield, but I suspect that the best yields for this outdoors require a February sowing.
5. Black Russian, Super Marmande have both yielded successfully outdoors the past two years. I’ve found that doubling the recommended dose of Tomorite for these strains gives you higher numbers of fruit. Indeed, without high Tomorite, I’ve found Black Russian to be a bit of a fusspot during fruit set.
6. In terms of the latest times to sow and get a crop, I sowed Red Alerts in early May this year, for whatever reason they took nearly 3 weeks to germinate and yet I still harvested fruit in 15cm pots in early September. The experiment of using multiple small pots (5 15cm pots in this case) showed you can get 7.5lb of Red Alerts that way, which will make you a nice winter supply of tomato sauce if that takes your fancy…..
7. Alicante I have found to be very consistent in its yields and taste the past three years. Shirley gave me a monster crop last year but only about 6lb this – it does set fruit extremely reliably though. Tigerella’s yield this year wasn’t huge but the taste was excellent and the fruit are perfectly formed. My experiences with Ailsa Craig and Sub-Arctic Plenty this year were less good than last year’s whopping crops whilst Glacier is a reliably high cropper with a reputed tolerance for the cold (which has been of supreme indifference this year in SE England!)
8. Finally, the Cedrico and Zenith strains I grew for show worked very well in Rhizopots and the taste of Zenith, in particular, was extremely good.
All this was achieved using about 15 sqm of patio space, some under the cover of a car port but many simply living out in the open in what was one of the most consistently warm and dry summers for a couple of decades.
I was hoping to upload an Excel spreadsheet with the data which underpins these assertions (Charles has already seen it), but the only files which can be uploaded are png, gif, jpg and jpeg…..