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Gardening in the UK

Tomato seedlings help?

19 years ago

Hi all, I'm new to this forum and have heaps of gardening questions but here is my first question.

I'm moving into a new house in about 6 weeks and will have a good size back garden (not huge but large enough for a veggie patch and some flowers). I'm going to need lots of advice when it comes to planting as I'm really new to gardening and tend to kill things of as I usually forget to water them. However, since I've become a stay-at-home-mum I've managed to keep several plants alive so perhaps there is hope for me yet!

I bought some small seedlings of tomato plants the other day and thought I could keep them inside (it still seems a bit cold for them outside...I live in rural Ireland btw). I gave them a good soak in the back tub over night with some other board flowering plants which are also seedlings. I notice one of the tomato plants stem broke a bit but wondered if it would still be okay? perhaps it graft itself back on?? wishful thinking perhaps? I gave them all a little bit of slow release fertiliser the other day and the tomato's got some special tomato fertiliser (slow release)...should I have waited till they were in the ground? Also, as I said I won't be moving into my new house for another 6 weeks when I thought I'd put them into a new veggie patch I hope to establish (that's going to have to be another thread!). Will they be okay on my window sill till then (it gets morning sun and is nice and warm)? will they last? what else should I do to keep them alive?

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Comments (2)

Suiko
19 years ago
Yes, wishful thinking! Bin the broken one.

Better not to fertilise when they're so young and indoors, I'd say - they'll grow too fast and get very spindly. Make sure they're in big enough pots - you don't say how tall the plants are.

Btw, I don't know what variety the tomatoes are, but I wouldn't hold out much hope for them to fruit significantly in Ireland unless it's an unusually hot summer. It's quite a bit warmer here in Oxford, and I grow most of mine on my terrace, which is quite a bit warmer than the allotment. They need the warmest, sunniest place you've got, anyway.

Good luck!
alcina
19 years ago
Light, light and more light! That's what tomatos need. Put them in the lightest, brightest, sunniest window you have..but..whilst indoors keep them as cool as possible. Too warm and too dark means leggy seedlings. As they grow you can repot them deeply - bury the stem right up over the seed leaves, they produce roots from the stem.

Outside might be a bit cold to produce a good crop - do you have a sunny walled corner by any chance? That would be a possibility. Failing that, assuming you've got a determinate tomato, they grow well in those little growbag greenhouses - a pvc construction that's designed to go over a single growbag and act as a little 4' greenhouse. The problem with indeterminate tomato plants is that they can grow considerably taller than 4'! Can you remember the variety you bought?

Hopefully you have a crop of some sort! Next year, you'll be even better placed to produce more. Have fun!

Alcina
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