Kitchen Garden Forum

I've just spotted this cover for outdoor tomatoes in a Dobies catalogue

http://www.dobies.co.uk/Garden/Garden+Equipment/Protecting+Your+Plants/Cloches+and+Plant+Protection/Growth+Cover_585092.htm


I'm wondering if it might be an answerto protecting outdoor tomatoes against blight, and for getting a better, faster ripening crop in more northern climates ?

Any thoughts on how successful it might be, bearing in mind you would have to regularly lift/remove it for sideshooting and tying into the tomato stake as the plants grow?

The link doesn,t seem to work but basically it looks like a long roll of very deep transparent bags which you tear off individually rather like kitchen freezer bags, putting one over each tomato plant and tying the top end over the top end of
each each tomato pole. The bags do appear to have tiny air holes in them but somebody said to me the lack of ventilation could possibly cause botrytis?

Dear Primrose, i often go by, if things are not being used by proffesionals first, they won't be a lot of good.

let it be . plant will be plant .do not think out other way to make it grow faster . i love natural .....

Hi Primrose. I have to admit, I was thinking along those lines as I was reading your post. Despite the small holes in the "bag", the plants might get over wet with condensation?
Greenhouses mist up during the night when the temperature drops, so I assume the same could happen with the cover. Just a thought.

Yes I was thinking the same thing seeing all the condensation forming inside my mini plastic greenhouse overnight and if it can happen there it can equally happen inside a large plastic bag cover. I wonder how adequately it was trialled before being offered for sale as a blight resistant facility. You couldn't see the size of the ventilation holes in the catalogue illustration so difficult to judge whether they would be adequate.

I seem to recall tha Bob Flowerdew suggested that by angling a sheet of plastic over outdoor tomatoes then the prevailing winds would carry the blight spores up and over the toms and protect them from the disease.Wonder if it works,he used to have some strange sounding ideas IMO.

snooky wrote:I seem to recall tha Bob Flowerdew suggested that by angling a sheet of plastic over outdoor tomatoes then the prevailing winds would carry the blight spores up and over the toms and protect them from the disease.Wonder if it works,he used to have some strange sounding ideas IMO.

That I would take with an extremely large pinch of salt!

clairelv1 wrote:let it be . plant will be plant .do not think out other way to make it grow faster . i love natural .....

100% agreed. You don't need to rush a natural process. Enjoy the 'journey'. Trust me your tomatoes are going to turn out just fine.