Kitchen Garden Forum

I usually grow several plants of Gardener's Delight, we like the flavour and the size is just right, usually between a larger cherry and a smaller standard, but this year they've grown differently. Each truss has forked and forked again so that there are 5 or 6 branches to them, with loads of tiny cherry toms on each truss. Smaller than cherries from our tree. The plants look healthy, and of course the toms are still welcome, but has anyone else had this happen? I don't grow cherry toms this small so I've not mixed up the seed.

I'm also growing some Gardeners Delight outdoors. My trusses haven't forked. I just have so few of them that I fear my crop will be very miserable as some flowers haven't even set and I usually find this variety a prolific yielder. I can only suspect that the weather has caused the plants to do all kinds of strange things. Also my foliage is thinner and a lighter green than usual, despite the plants being grown in a trench of manure and compost - again I suspect something to do with the wet weather and cold night temperatures.

Hi FatB,
Some time back we had a thread running on just this topic. I have just tried to find it by putting Gardeners Delight and got more than 20 pages on just about everything but GD.
I suspect that those that split into multi trusses with masses of very small Cherry Tomatoes were subjected to low temperatures in their formative days.
That is below 10C which is the absolute minimum for tomatoes.
If you want an explanation PM me and I will happily spill the beans!
JB.

I think this is the thread:

viewtopic.php?t=3601&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=gardeners+delight&start=0

I'm growing in a cold greenhouse so I was looking at this recentely as I've got near on 100 flowers on one truss of GD ( packet that came free with KG magazine I beleive) , I always thought it was all the wood ash I buried under the plants!

To be honest I've got brandywines that keep splitting into two evenly sized vines - resemble a Y and every time they do it I have to cut out one of the branches. Alicantes are also showing larger numbers of fruit on trusses than I'd expect. Following the cold greenhouse thread I plan to use a little heat next year as something isn't right - mid April I started off the toms - it's not like I sowed too early.

cheers

KC

Oh well done King Carrot!! That is the last thread but this theme has cropped-up on several occasions.
When Gardeners Delight first came on the market it was nothing like a Cherry variety and Cherry varieties were unknown at that time. They were a small to medium fruit of superb taste. Sadly I can remember it!
JB.

I've just looked up my records and from what's been said I think I was too early and quite likely to have had -10 or more at some stage. Sown 5 Mar, pricked out 2 Apl, planted out 28 Apl, so it's rapped knuckles for me then.
edit: Not -10 of course, less than 10 was what I meant to say!

I have also had experience of tomato plants forking [often after one truss has formed]so that I haven't been able to distinguish which of the two branches is the "junior" one. I've therefore allowed both to grow and topped each branch after 2 more trusses. I haven't noticed any ill effects, but I've had no way of assessing whether the fruits are smaller than expected. I've still ended up with 5 trusses on the plant.

mike

Hi Mike,
My father was addicted to growing Ailsa Craig Tomatoes and in order to increase his yield he used to allow the first pair of side shoots to stay there and when they were large enough it was then that he planted them in their final position. He used to bury the plant up to the point where these side shoots were just in the soil. When they had thrown roots out he put a 4" collar round the plant and fill with soil. He then had 3 vines instead of one and it worked beautifully and they were fed on home made compost liquor only. They were sweet, thin skinned and exceedingly prolific. To be perfectly honest I have not got the time or the inclination to do likewise but by rooting the side shoots it gives the plant the extra boost that it needs.
I only feed me but my father supplied half the district!
JB.

Hi JB. I'm trying that this year, growing the toms as triple cordons, but I didn't quite plant them down at ground level. The three cordons have a cane each and are not much behind the parent cordon, but next time I'll do what your Dad did, it makes sense to get the extra roots.
Thanks for that.

Hi FatB,
I think beyond a shadow of doubt the secondary root system is a very great advantage with the triple vine. Incidentally that secondary root system is quite extensive and it means that nutrition has a far better chance of reaching the parts that need it.
JB.

Having noticed the variation of size of fruit on Gardeners Delight last year I kept plenty of seeds from the cuttings I took from the 2 plants purchased from a local Garden Centre. This year I did a comparison with GD seeds from Suttons/Titchmarsh, Fothergill and two other suppliers and the outstanding difference is that the saved seeds produced significantly bigger fruits. I cannot give more detail of variance between the other plantings yet, hope to do some more later, time permitting. THe point is that GD is open pollinated so one must expect variations between different suppliers.
Allan

Thanks Allan, that's interesting. As I remember it this year I used the free ones from KG. Were you able to track back the ones you bought?

Update.
Picked a large bowl of mixed toms from the polytunnel this morning and noticed that the top half of the GD's are growing normal trusses and setting fruit all along the stems as usual so all is not lost for the year as I thought. Obviously the plant as a whole has not been affected by the low temperature so it's full steam ahead for a normal crop for the rest of the season.
Phew!

Further update. Picking literally hundreds of cherry size toms from the two plants, not recovered to normal size as I said earlier. We've eaten a few but we've got so many other normal size toms that the GD's are getting frozen in bags for cooking. I shan't be so eager to get them started early next year!

Hi FatB,
My Gardeners Delight are producing an average of 9 tomatoes per truss in the greenhouse. I take out side shoots up to 5 trusses and then I simply let the plant go and I will have masses of smaller fruits produced from then on. I generally find a few on Christmas Day and my god are they tasty.
It gets to a point where the entire canopy of the gh is full.
I always take seed from this strain and my tomatoes are never allowed to exposed to a temperature below 10C during their formative stage and as a consequence I feel this is why my trusses are normal. Even when the plants are allowed to do their own thing I get masses of smaller fruits but I do not get massive trusses.
This year night temperatures have been at what I would consider the lowest of all my growing years.
Just down the road to me a temperature of 4C was recorded in the second week of July. Here frost are not unusual from the last week in August. So far we have not had one but last night we were down to 7C.
This is recorded on three min/max thermometers.
JB.