Ruud Kleinpaste: Tomatoes later in season

We built a new Tunnel house around Christmas – meaning: we were far too late with our summer crop – just a few plants waited patiently in their pots to be put in the new facility and yes… they are having a go.  

Relative warmth in February, March and April gives them ability to grow fruit well into autumn and when they are inside glass houses or tunnel houses they’ll even carry on in early winter. (that’s the situation in Canterbury) 

In warmer areas it is usually a lot easier to keep on going; Auckland was a great place to keep the climbers on track. 

A Sunny patch in the vegetable garden is probably one of the most important contributing factors. Six or even more hours a day is needed to keep it all going. 

This year has been a pain – everything needs adjustment.  

In our garden everything is late. But planting sizable tomatoes in early January is rather ridiculous… But there are some things you can do to get some crops in late summer.  

It is important to trim the bottom new side shoots and let air circulate as much as possible. Trim off he yellow leaves too. 

 

This is what it looks like after trimming. 

The air movement reduces relative humidity and that allows the leaves below to dry much quicker. No fungal troubles ahead! 

Keep on removing the “laterals” that form in between the new leaves – laterals attempt to make more and more side shoots, but too many of them result in too many small fruits all over the plants. 

We had to plant our late tomatoes in excellent soil that looked and acted like compost-rich material. This allowed a quick and useful, fertile soil around the main stalk. This in itself made the roots grow fast and in all sorts of directions.  

Every week or 10 days I made sure that the plants were well watered with a decent amount of water over the plant’s area of growth. Nitrophoska Blue is a brilliant complex of fertilizer in the form of a granular mixture. When plants are watered the granules are slowly released and deposited around the root zone. 

 

Every 2 days I aim to gently water the plants; not too much… just keeping up with the liquid fertiliser which allows the tomatoes to grow new, deep-green leaves and healthy new fruits. My secret is SeaWeed Tea from Wet and Forget. I dilute the Seaweed Tea in the watering can (or an old plastic drinking bottle) to make the liquid look like a week tea.  

The brilliant trick is to water the plants and root zones every 2 days or so and add some liquid fertiliser at the same time. 

The tomatoes will reward you with great, tasty fruit while growing with Vapour Trails, so to speak. That means keeping an eye on the density of foliage, which needs to be trimmed regularly – give the plants space! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A'd be Routcline passes our man in the garden.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Good morning, any, very good morning to you, doctor Taime
that you've had troubles with your tomatoes.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I know, well, I don't know troubles. I don't know
if I've had troubles. I just had, do you know.
I actually think I've had the best season I've had
with my tomatoes at the family home. No, I've had
a really good season because I just grew cherry tomatoes.
I got kind of, to be honest, I got sick
of the chunkier tomato varietals because I was just kind
of having issues with them. And then they'd be really
I'd get the kind of the central fleshiness, but they'd

(00:43):
be like overly fleshy, whereas that whereas the cherry tomatoes
are quite they've been quite sweet, they've been abundant, but
they're done.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Funny that because you know, we've had a very creepy
summery if you like, I mean even in Auckland. Ay,
it's just ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, And there's and we were
making it even more difficult. We had to buy build
a new tunnel house from Mourrayfield Greenhouses and in Vergago,
and that was done just literally after Christmas. Now can

(01:15):
you imagine I had nowhere to put any tomatoes at all,
and just had about four of these things, So five
of these things waiting for the tunnel house to be
put up, and suddenly I started working. How do you
do that so quick? Because it's well beyond the normal time,
isn't it. Of course, so I thought. And so the
last thing you said last week was yeah, the tomatoes

(01:37):
are finished, and I thought, no, blow it. We can
do better than that. So here are the stories of
how to keep your your tomatoes going. Get yourself a greenhouse.
Where's the wall? You know it is a bit warmer,
to be quite honest, but it was still rotten here
in Christ's. Okay, here comes to thing. You need to

(01:59):
put the tomato in a really nice warm area, which
is what I did in the new greenhouse. Six hours
or more of sun is important, so that probably seven
or eight would be even better. Now you take off
this is important. You take the laterals off at the bottom,
which are all the little bits of beasts that grow

(02:20):
up which are not going to give you any fruit
at all. But also at ground level, you've got to
take those little things out of there, because you need
a lot of decent air flow there to stop everybody
getting stroubles, you know. Number Three, you use the best
soil that you can get to put around your main plant,

(02:44):
because even your plant could have actually gone a bit longer,
I would say, and the roots go down better than
and they are much more resilient as well. Finally, you
get no, not finally, almost finally you get rid of
the yellow leaves. Did you get yellow leaves on your plants?

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Only a couple, not too many? Yeah, okay, yeah I
want to okay.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, secretars, get them off, forget about them. You don't
need them, all right, And then here comes the watering regime.
And this is probably mostly important. Your water once a week,
every ten days maybe decent watering really lots, put a
bit of Nitroposca blue in there. But every other day

(03:25):
you'll follow it up with regular use of what I
call liquid fertilizer. And my favorite one for tomatoes is
seaweed tea from wet and forget so every two days, yeah,
because that actually makes the flowers come. And then the
fruit set as well, and if you do that on
a regular two day basis, you'll find the devil work.

(03:46):
And ten days later again big lot of water again
to really make it noist and moist and all that
sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Once you do that, fertilizer are you giving in?

Speaker 1 (03:57):
I put a little bit of nitrofosca blue in the
root zone. But what I give them is seaweed tea,
which is something that you can mix with water in
your watering and literally you don't just water it a
little bit, you also fertilize it at the same time,
and then the plant opens everything it has and guess what,
even Jack Dane will have still tomatoes at this time

(04:20):
of the year.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, very good, because I'll tell you what. The cucumber
is still absolutely gunning it, crushing it at the moment.
So thank you for that. Okay, Well, look, each year
if we just aimed to improve slightly on the year before,
so you know, I know you do.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
That's why I want to keep you going.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Very good. Thanks road climb passing the garden for us.
We'll wait for those tips and that's seaweed tea are
up on the news talks. He'd be website For more
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