Garden Bears' World - Growing Tomatoes

Hello everyone!  It's Endon Bear here with another Garden Bears' World.  This one is about growing tomatoes when you are going boating and can't water them regularly.

Polar has a clever way of setting up watering for her plants when she is away that doesn't involve leaving taps turned on or timers.  It uses capillary matting, gravel trays and empty module trays or pot holders to create big reservoirs for plants to stand on without getting waterlogged. 

This year she is adding a cover made from pond liner offcuts to stop any evaporation from the trays, so hopefully they will work even better.

The capillary matting sits on top of the modules, then the pond liner goes over the top, leaving gaps for the tomato pots.

Here you can see the pots in place.  Polar filled them about two-thirds full with homemade compost, then put a layer of bought compost on top to cut down the number of weeds that would grow through and compete with the tomatoes.

Polar's tomato plants haven't done well this year.  She started them early but they have only grown very slowly due to the cool weather, until the last few warm weeks when they have finally got going.  Polar's dad's already have lots of little baby tomatoes on them, although he does live two hundred miles further south!

When the tomato plants were planted in the pots, Polar watered them thoroughly, then filled the trays underneath with water.  Each one holds about ten litres of water.  Polar says she will put some more pots of water around the plants to keep the air moist, as tomato plants don't like the atmosphere to be too dry.

The only other plants in this greenhouse are all things that can cope with being dry for a while, although Polar will give them a good water before we go away.

We have set up similar watering systems for tomato plants and other things in the little allotment greenhouse and the polycarbonate one.  Luckily, it does not look as though it will be too hot while we are away, so these desert plants will be quite happy.

It will be interesting to see how well everything grows without us looking after it!