This season has been another good one for my tomatoes. I've won 3 out of the 7 shows I've entered, and can't believe how I didn't win 3 more. On each occasion the judge's decision seemed totally baffling and that belief was reinforced by other people saying the same. I came 3rd out of 20 entries at Moorgreen which was perhaps the most satisfying of all the results in that the quality was very high and the show was judged by Gerald Treweek.....one of the now legendary judges from TV's 'The Great British Village Show'.
I put my improved success these last two years down to my feeding regime. I alternate the feeding with 3 different feeds. One is the usual tomato fertilisers you can buy from the garden centres and the other two are homemade 'stews'. I cut down comfrey and nettle leaves and soak them in buckets of water for a few weeks. The liquid is strained off into bottles giving the red comfrey liquid and the green nettle liquid. A capful of each of the 3 feeds in turn is put into each watering can at every watering during the season, AFTER the first fruit on the lowest truss has reached the size of a pea.
The only other feed I might give is a spraying of epsom salts over the foliage if the leaves start to turn a little yellow. This is a possible sign of magnesium deficiency, and spraying epsom salts on the leaves seems to miraculously turn them back to green within a few days.
Because of my feeding programme I've now won 6 shows in a row against our friend Wendy in the Smith v. Hallam tomato challenge after going several years unable to beat her.
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