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Monday, March 07, 2011

Cedrico go go

Another top day out tomorrow. A 5am start will see me motoring up the M6 for a day's walking in the Lake District and hopefully I'll have some sunshine to enable me to have decent views for once! I find it best to travel up that early in order to get past the stench of Liverpool as all the unwashed scallies skulk back to their beds as day breaks after a night of thieving. In the evening I shall be attending Ian Stocks' talk at Westmoreland DA on long carrots and after a few shite years with long carrots (something I'm sure he'll remind me of!) I hope to pick up a few tips to make 2011 a better one.

My Cedrico tomatoes have all germinated so these will be potted on in the next few days into cell trays for now. We still have night-time temperatures just above freezing so these will stay indoors for a long while yet.

























Whilst I was stocking up on calcified seaweed and superphosphates at the garden centre yesterday I bought a packet of beefsteak tomato seed. I don't ordinarily bother with beefsteak tommies but the schedule for the North of England Horticultural Society Championships popped through my door last week which is run in conjunction with the NVS Northern Branch Championships held at Harrogate in September. A class which caught my eye calls for 3 dishes of tomatoes, 3 beefsteak, 5 medium (e.g. Cedrico) and 6 small fruited. With first prize money being 40 quid I thought it might be worth entering hence the need to acquire the beefsteak type, although I'll only grow two plants of it at most.



4 comments:

chris the gardener said...

hi simon what type are the toms ive chosen country taste from t&m

Simon (Smithyveg) said...

It's one i've never seen before called 'Faworyt'....strange name. Liked the look of the photo!

Dan said...

Just a quick serious question for once.
When you prick out the toms and also when you repot, do you, as some suggest plant them deeper each time to encourage more roots from the stem or just repot at the same depth ?

Simon (Smithyveg) said...

At this early stage the tom seedlings do get quite leggy so tonight I have pricked them out into cell trays and buried them to a slightly deeper depth, leaving them about an inch high.

I'll pot on into 3" pots in a few weeks, then that should be it until planting out during late April. When planting out I do try and bury them so that the seed leaves are just sitting above the compost surface.

In GN this week Medwyn advocates burying them up to the first true leaves at planting time .....but (ahem!) he's never beaten me so i'll leave it up to you to decide!!! ;o)