Its been the most amazing year for invertebrates, mammals and avians, down here at least.

Whilst in previous years i've had to be content with sitting meditatively admiring the borders, this year i've been thoroughly entertained by the wildlife. I counted 9 butterflies of 5 species all at once in the front garden on sunday, flitting amongst the hundreds of bees and hoverflies. Then, in the evening i observed 4 hoglets foraging along my hedge line.

The sparrows seem to be breeding non stop too. Absolutely wonderful stuff. 

It has been a good year so far for invertebrates here but the longer the dry goes on diminishing returns I fear.

But the garden is ok but not as good as it could be. It's the watering which is the issue. 

Thank you Bolty for this suggestion. Night Scented Stock

Opium Poppies, a favourite of Bees and Hover flies

The Tropical Jungle Garden

When the hostas flower, another bee favourite

Hedychium ‘Elizabeth’ - just arrived from Cornwall

Wild Marjoram a bee staple

Cabbage White on Sea Kale 

Pool Aerator - the round ball is a net float that came across the Atlantic

Wild Carrot Flower - An insect favourite

 Fig

Heliotrope - Bees like the flowers at certain times of the day

Crab Apple 'Evereste' 

A Mirror gives the illusion of a larger place.

I've been growing tomatoes for years, outside and in a greenhouse and always found it relatively easy and have had large crops keeping us going well into November. But not this year. There have been two main issues - stunted and small curled leaves at the growing tips on the indoor ones and limited flower production on both indoor and outdoor varieties. This is happening to different species. I put it down to the endless hot days where temperatures in the greenhouse even with vents and door fully open temperatures were reaching the high 40's C. The outdoor ones caught some of this before they were put out and potted on or planted in the ground over the allotment but are doing better. In all cases flower production is low and starting much higher up the stems. Where there are tomatoes I would usually be getting ripe ones by now but most are still quite small and all are still green - even the cherry ones like Sungold.

Has anybody else had similar issues?

....... as keen gardeners and allotment growers you will have seen my rants about the drought in other weather related bits of forum. Living in the S.E of Essex we are in the driest region of the Country. Thankfully had 15 mm in the last 24 hours which helped. I used to collect Cacti in my youth and was thinking of growing some in our very dry front raised bed. Just the winter damp, not the temps that might be an issue.

FW,

No such issues, but I have not had good results growing in the greenhouse.

I always achieve phenomenal results outside on my allotment. I grow two varieties that are resistant to blight: Crimson Blush and Crimson Crush. The former is very large and very tasty.

Are you removing the side shoots properly? One problem you could be having this year is watering. I water mine every five days if temperatures are above, say, 28–29°C, and once a week when temperatures are in the low to mid-twenties. But when I water, I mean one gallon per plant.

Hope that helps.

Thanks - but it doesn't help 😁 Funnily enough they are the same two varieties I am growing over the allotment and they are the only ones doing really well. Last year was my first with Crimson Crush (the previous year the allotment got hit badly with blight so I knew this v. was supposed to be very resistant) and they were unbelievable. The stems were like tree trunks and needed little support despite the tomatoes being like cricket balls! I've added Crimson Blush this year - are they similar? Both have good strong trusses so they will be alright. I think the outdoor Alicante in the ground are going well but the ones in pots and greenhouse are really the affected ones. And yes, I'm quite fastidious about the side shoots except on the Red Alert which I am trying as a bush variety.

 The only other thing might have been I used a different peat free compost to start them off in and it was crap. It easily got waterlogged and the early leaves had that purplish tinge underneath. They did recover when I potted them up in my own home made compost formula I use. (2 parts garden compost, 1 part bought topsoil, handful of blood, fish and bone)

This sounds like heat stress. Anything over 35c and the plants really suffer. 

I've had great success growing in the greenhouse but i stick with the following rules - 

- Corner panes of glass removed from June onwards to ensure low level airflow is consistent and temps don't get above 40c (can be 50c with panes in). I also have auto vents on the roof. I also leave the door open day and night. 

- I grow my toms in mother earth, not grow bags or pots. This ensures the roots can stay cool and grow deep ensuring that the bottom half of the plant is not stressed. 

- Tap timed drip line set to run on a daily cycle @ 5am for 10minutes. This is below a mulch layer so the top of the plant and soil are never wet (helps fight blight), but the roots are always moist.

If I couldn't achieve any of the above then i probably wouldn't bother growing toms at all as unlike others i've had little success growing outside. 

I've been thinking about trying outdoor cacti too. I was inspired by a family member who had chucked a straggly indoor potted cactus outside their door where it survived completely unchecked for many years.

I wonder if the winter damp can be mitigated by some extremely sharp drainage, and perhaps a larger shrub or canopy sitting slightly above for a bit of shelter? Years ago we built the dry garden @ Hyde Hall, some inspiration down the road, perhaps!

I find Blush is much tastier, and the skin is thinner, so I highly recommend it. The fruits are also a lot larger. Crush is better at coping with the weather towards November, so it continues to produce and ripen fruit until the first frosts—hence the reason for growing two varieties.

I sent some seeds to Serbia, and this year my friend reported problems with fruit blight. I have no idea why. I put it down to a sudden change in temperatures and watering.

I plant my tomatoes differently from everyone else. I grow the plant stems to be long and leggy. Then I dig out a hole and lay the stem flat into the soil, lifting only the top third while burying the rest horizontally. This encourages loads of roots and results in strong stems that can support the plant.

I use plastic-coated poles that are about 2.2m tall (a very good investment). I religiously remove side shoots and water copiously around the plant. I also make a big depression around each one so the water settles well. I grow about 80 plants—so roughly 800kg of tomatoes every year. Don’t ask me if I eat anything else or what I do with so many, but we freeze a lot for pasta, etc.

All are grown in soil, but a friend and neighbour grows them in bags as well and has fantastic success. He uses the following compost:

https://www.bmstores.co.uk/products/westland-gro-sure-peat-reduced-all-purpose-compost-50l-397200 

That's interesting. I, with some students, grew tomatoes at school, in a tunnel, in grow bags. One got absolutely massive and when I pulled it up in the autumn I found it had roots that had escaped the grow bag and got into the soil...The thing about cool roots hadn't occurred to me but makes sense.

We also used to grow tomatoes, singly (I've never thought grow bags are big enough) in animal feedbags that were half filled with a mix  roughly 2/3 new compost and 1/3 very well rotted farm yard manure. They looked fab until mid summer when they simply stopped growing. It turns out that herbicides can survive a cereal crop growing, the straw being used ans animal bedding (or eaten), rotting down for at least a year and then toms being gown in it - toms being extremely sensitive to certain herbicides. At least that seemed the most likely explanation I could come up with at the time but, humm, hot roots though?

Outdoor is great but blight can wipe them out almost overnight. But there's no blight even on my spuds this year, the dry weather keeps it a bay. Wet summers = keep tomatoes under cover.

I can't imagine toms bigger than our Crimson Crush last year. Some almost the size of cricket balls yet still sweet and tender. Looking forward to the Blush ones now! When you said you grew almost a tonne of tomatoes I thought you must have been talking commercially. I reckon we have about a dozen plants in various locations and limit to 5-6 trusses per plant and we are having to give them away by the end of August!

Lol. I eat a lot of tomatoes for breakfast—usually with Greek cheese or mozzarella. We really get through a lot!

Blush are larger, more like beef tomatoes, but as I mentioned earlier, they stop abruptly as soon as the weather turns. Crush, on the other hand, seems to keep going and continues to ripen.

I’m not growing commercial quantities—this is just over the season, from July through to the first frosts at the end of October.

I’ve been picking tomatoes for a couple of weeks now, and they’re coming along really well.

My general approach to all veg is keep the roots cool and try to keep that moisture contained opposed to relying on overwatering, which induces stress in most plants. 

I've no doubt you're onto something regarding the herbicide too, perhaps even chemicals / antibiotics that pass through heavily medicated livestock onto that bedding. My family keep horses and many bagged feeds contain dietry additives, so it could be residual in the bag too! It certainly makes you think twice about what is, and is not, organic! 

@Sasa, your layering technique sounds very interesting, im going to give that a go next year, along with the varieties suggested! 

Clopyralid is notorious for persisting in compost. It damages tomato plants and courgettes, squashes etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clopyralid 

Regarding the layering technique—once the season is finished, pull out the whole plant and have a look at the roots. 

I never plant out tomatoes before the 1st of May, but I aim for the latter part of the first week in May.

If you start your seedlings in mid to late February, they should be long enough by then (in my case, around 40 cm). If you can see the first flower buds, that’s a good sign they’re ready to be planted out.

The risk of light frosts in my area is quite rare after, say, the 5th or 6th of May, although it’s still worth keeping an eye on the forecast just in case.

I reckon there was some of that or similar in Lidl peat free grow bags this year. I didn't grow my tomatoes in that but I did germinate the seeds in them and they didn't start life well. It's funny because I've never had any issues with tomatoes till this year and it is difficult to pin point the issue as there are too many variables.

Funnily enough my toms are in a organic peat free grow bag, they're not doing too badly, but next year they're going into the ground.  I tried hanging basket in (non organic) peat free a year or two ago and the plants simply didn't grow, they just stopped - useless.

Anything with non organic farm yard manure in it is potentially contaminated.

I’ve often wondered about some of the proprietary peat free compost you can buy nowadays.

If I go to the tip in Dorchester I’ll sometimes take garden debris I can’t compost myself.

These skips of plant material are then composted somewhere and the resulting compost bagged and sold in various places. So if someone adds domestic grass cuttings that were treated with a selective herbicide, I would think this means the compost cannot be sold as organic. But is it?

I’ve noticed that cheap compost is often badly made, stinks and is full of wood chips. What manufacturers have a rigorous and consistent chemical analysis of the material they bag up and sell? There are some but it’s buyer beware.

And then lastly something I’m going to try and take further. Flea treatments. There is a lake across the road where dog owners are encouraged to let their dog swim in.

https://silverlakedorset.com/landingpage-knighton-reserve/ 

And they do. Sometimes hundreds of them daily in hot weather.

I’m going to ask if the EA can do some water analysis for fipronil, imidacloprid and similar chemicals. There is certainly a drop in dragonfly numbers this year around the location. Which this year has low water levels and possibly more concentrated chemicals in the water. But it’s just a hypothesis I have that this insect drop in numbers is due to flea treatments. I could well be wrong and the dogs that use this place are not treated for fleas.

The sheer amounts of such chemical being put onto (and into) dogs and cats is, to my mind, utterly crazy. They are extremely toxic chemicals - it's madness.

This will be the rubbish horse owners spray on their fields failling to understand that herbacous plants are infinitely better for their animals than just grass alone. 

Here's another one for people who keep horses and other livestock.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0929139323002196 

So if you're tempted to put horse manure on your garden, perhaps think again. 

Is it ragwort they fear? I have an inbuilt concern over any chloro hydrocarbons given the damage they have done to the environment over the decades in their various forms..

Been to Hyde Hall many a time and do love that dry garden. Generally HH looked a bit degenerated this Spring and early summer. Not sure if it was the drought or the RHS lacking funds or staff.

Certain cactus species lend themselves better to damp. I have grown Opuntia sp. for a few years outdoors but a wet winter will do for it. Seem to do well in Mediterranean scrub though. As cold is rarely an issue I would think plenty of gravel round the base and overhead cover in the winter would work. That's what made us get the Eryngium for our front raised walled bed. The best bee plant I have ever seen!