16th June, 2012

What happened to my tomatoes? (click on the pictures to view them in a higher resolution).

This is what four of my tomato plants look like after I potted them on into their final pots with new multi-purpose compost.  So what has gone wrong?  Now I admit that they were overdue for repotting and normally I pot from 3" pots into slightly larger ones before they go into their final large pots in the greenhouse.  This time I ran out of compost and just potted straight from 3" pots to the final ones.

As you can see from the picture below, they looked fine when I potted them up.

Even more intriguing is that three other plants that I had potted into intermediate sized pots look fine. In the picture below they are to the left in the black and orange pots. Towards the back on the right in the white bucket is a plant I potted up from a 3" pot using a different batch but same make of compost and that looks fine too.  So I don't think it's the compost.

Or is it that the plants were slightly undernourished and the repotting did them in?

The three plants I potted into intermediate sized pots can be used to replace those that have died.  There was a reason why I decided to keep them after all!  I didn't 't really have space for them but I do now.  It does mean that I only have one gardener's delight plant now; the three replacements are of unknown variety as I got them as a gift.  I will retrieve one more plant from the garden for the fourth replacement.