Quadgrow for growing outdoor tomatoes…….

[Rhys]

Charles suggested I shared some observations I made to him via email concerning outdoor tomato growing this year.

In doing so I acknowledge the huge amount I’ve learned about tomato growing in pots from Nick Chenhall, who runs the tomato website http://www.tomatogrowing.co.uk and grows huge numbers of tomatoes each year in the West Midlands. Not to mention the discount he obtained for members to purchase Quadgrows from Harrod Horticultural, which I took advantage of this spring.

The Quadgrow is a platform for growing four plants a season using an enclosed reservoir system (easily topped up once a week/fortnight depending on temperature, how often you want to change the contents of the reservoir etc) linked to the growing medium by capillary matting.

I tested the platform out for my late competition sowings, two of which I sowed with the April full moon and two on a fruit day in late April (ascending moon). One plant was Tigerella, three were Capriccia, an exhibition strain I obtained from a small company in NW England. All plants were transplanted (obviously at different sizes) in early June into the Quadgrow and gradually increasing doses of Tomorite were added to the reservoir from early August onwards. I gave direct feeding doses of seaweed extract to the soil through to the end of August to ensure all trusses continued to grow to full potential (I stopped all plants at 4 trusses).

The key insights I’ve found are:
1. As long as you don’t let the reservoir dry out (I did once during a very hot spell), you will get very high frequency fruit set and very high quality, uniform tomato growth despite the late sowing dates.
2. The impact of the Tomorite through a continuous feeding regimen is far more rapid, far more dramatic than feeding traditionally grown pot plants once every 10 days on fruit days. Visible advancement of ripening is discernible within 24hrs of increasing Tomorite dosage in the Quadgrow.
3. Ripening continues to advance through September, despite temperatures now being consistently below 20C by day and just over 10C by night

The one thing of course with the Quadgrow is that once you’ve positioned it for the season, you can’t really move it. My position, determined by overhead protection of a carport, only gets 4 – 6hrs of direct sunshine a day even at the height of summer, partly due to rampant overgrowth of neighbours’ trees to the south. So this shows that you can still harvest high quality outdoor tomatoes despite using late sowing dates, despite not having optimal sunshine hours too.

All is not lost if you don’t invest in such kit, however. I’ve also managed to continue to ripen Super Marmande beefsteaks and the exhibition strain Zenith in traditional pots based at positions under the carport that have even less direct sunlight than the Quadgrow. Both were sown on the March Full Moon and started harvesting in late July. The Super Marmande looks like it will finish the season with a yield of around 10lb (already harvested well over 8.5lb) and the Zenith should give 5lb of super, high quality salad tomatoes.

Over the past 2 years, I think I’ve shown clearly to myself that plants grown in pots can respond to biodynamic rhythms and do well with seeds harvested biodynamically, sown on fruit days prior to full moons, transplanted, pinched out and fed on fruit days and having lower branches broken off on fruit days also.

Charles has pictures through email, but I’m not sure how to upload them using this system……..

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