Hi, Tiny Gardener here…
I have been growing tomatoes in my raised bed and the first fruits began to appear in July. The plant has since produced a few trusses of healthy looking, green tomatoes. I made sure to pinch out the side-shoots, and cut off the growing tips as well, so that the plant could direct all of its nutrients into growing tasty fruits. With all this lovely, warm weather we’ve been having in the U.K this summer I was expecting to be almost ready to harvest these and make some yummy tomato and mozzarella salads.
However, the tomatoes are still green and this puzzled me. I did some research and found that there are a few reasons the fruits may not be growing/ripening yet:
- Hot weather – It’s been quite a warm summer this year across most parts of the U.K. With long spells of dry weather and high temperatures this could have had an effect on the growing speed of my tomatoes. Although they love the sunlight, they aren’t a huge fan of the heat apparently, so this could be a contributing factor to the slow growing fruits.
- Too much feeding and watering – I’ve lost so many plants to various issues this year that when my tomatoes were doing so well I was extra careful about making sure they had enough water. I have lately been keeping up regularly feeding them with an organic tomato feed too. I have since discovered this can sometimes make the plant produce extra foliage and not concentrate its efforts into producing and ripening it’s fruits. This is definitely possible in my case, the plant was noticeably producing a large amount of green leaves which prompted me to cut back the branches and the tops of the plant, mainly as I was worried that not enough light was getting at the tomatoes.
I am hoping with more light and fewer leaves to suck all the nutrients from the soil, the tomatoes will have a better chance of ripening. As we get into late summer now, the temperatures should start to come down a bit and hopefully we’ll have some tomatoes to harvest before September arrives. Watch this space….