Tomato plants aka Triffids!

Re aubergines. Take off some flowers. Leave half a dozen on each plant. Whe you pick the aubergines more flowers will come. My husband also uses a slot brush to make sure hey cross pollinate

@Callistemon, re peppers, that reminded me of when I was maybe 6 or 7 and we were asked to take things to school for a Harvest Festival display. My father was working in central London at the time, where there were markets selling all sorts you never saw in the local greengrocer’s. One item he brought was a green pepper - I’d never seen such a thing and well remember thinking how funny it smelt! This would have been in the mid 1950s - how things have changed!

I haven't got a garden... Not even got suitable window sills.

Our next door neighbours had a productive peach tree and used to pass them over the fence when I was a child and that was umpteen years ago.
Not down south either.

People have been growing tomatoes etc. for ages in the UK. My mother’s father did, and she’d have been 102 this year! A great-grandfather of mine grew lovely peaches against a sunny garden wall, too. I remember those, since he lived until I was about 14.
Mind you both of these were in the S of the U.K., Herts and SE London.

We've always grown tomatoes and cucumbers.

Peppers, no, because we didn't eat them years ago. My peppers (capsicums) are in the greenhouse.

I can hardly believe you can grow here these types of so-called Mediterranean veg. so easily now after being away for nearly 20 years
We grew them with few problems when we lived in SW France- apart from occasional mildew on tomatoes as mentioned by annifrance.
All sorts and colours of capiscums, even black not so good!
Shows the effects of global warming.

Ohmother spaghetti squash is great fun. The inside is like spaghetti surrounded by squash flesh. Try with a cheese sauce. Put grated cheese on top and brown.

I chopped up a vine tomato that had gone squashy, and puts the pieces in pots of soil, with just a sprinkle over the top. I got so many plants that I gave a lot away. I started a bit late in the year, so they have only just started to flower. I have five very healthy-looking plants outside, as I have no greenhouse. I hope that I get any fruit to ripen before autumn sets in, and that it turns out to be tasty. I may have to bring the pots into my utility room if it turns chilly.
I will try again next year, but start a lot earlier.

First attempt at growing cucumbers this year as it's the first year of having a very small greenhouse. So far the cucumbers are the size of my little finger nail so if they do carry on, I'm hoping for a good crop for Christmas! Definitely going to try tomatoes next year - I like the idea of growing them from seeds taken from a tomato.

Try putting the discarded side shoots ( at least 2 inches long) in water in jam jars and place indoors on sunny window ledge for at least 7 to 10days. Pot rooted plants and continue as normal. These are exactly the same as plants grown from seed but have the advantage of being little plants instead of seedlings. Have been doing this for years and always have plenty of healthy, tasty, tomatoes.

We grew tomatoes last year and some seeds must have been left in the soil and we had lots of tomato plants this year. I've just left a few in and weeded out the rest.

I've no idea what variety they are but they are looking promising.

I have had success in the past from putting some flesh from a tomato on to kitchen paper and then storing it in a paper bag.

Fed cucumber and courgette plants with a tomato-rite / viagra watering can cocktail and they are enormous. More like marrows.

So many useful ideas here. Off to pilfer DH’s aspirin stash. ?
Very envious of tomatoes grown from a squashed one. Thanks to lockdown I paid £3:99 for a packet of seeds and had two plants grow from the 5 in the packet ?

? Rosiebee! Waste not, want not....

SueEH, you’re the first person I’ve known since back in the UK (ages now) who’s been to Al Ain. We did a short break there from Abu Dhabi aeons ago.
May your date palms flourish! Have you got a greenhouse or conservatory to winter them in?

my tomatoes are all outdoors, 3 varieties and 3 of each. They are doing very well but they have put on so much growth in the past few weeks, I haven`t been able to keep up with side shooting. I decided to stop all of them today, the determinates (bush) tomtoes have too many sprays and I have taken the latest ones off. The indeterminates, I usually let 4 sprays mature and today I have cut off all the newest buds and flowers. 4 sprays on an indeterminate is plenty considering it is already august. The fruits need time to grow and mature

Last week I picked the biggest tomatoes from low down, the ones that have a slight yellow tinge, I brought them indoors and wrapped each one up, all now in a wicker basket, starting to turn red. Taking them off allows the plant to concentrate on the new fruits that would more likely be green at the end of the season

I am feeling my way wrt watering, twice a day at the moment and tomato feed every few days

Marketmore cucs are not performing well here either, only eaten 3 small ones so far

My tomatoes are nothing to write home about this year, but I planted three date stones in April - one from a date I picked up in the Al Ain oasis in Abu Dhabi last November and two from a box of dates given to me by a friend in AD for Christmas.
They suddenly pinged into life about a month ago in the airing cupboard and are now each about a foot high. Should I be worried?. ??

Tomatoes grown from seeds given free with magazine in 2009, recently found in drawer.

Twin tomatoes from one flower! Is this at all common, dear experienced growers, or is it a sign of some disease/deficiency I haven’t heard of??
All the others look perfectly normal and healthy.

Try using a paintbrush to transfer the pollen from the male to female plant on the aubergines.The female has a bump behind it

Bought a red pepper plant. Doing well with plenty of fruit but, golly, they're staying a very dark green and it's been ages now. Can't decide if I'm being too impatient or the plant was wrongly labelled initially. Any experience, please?

I remember seeing fabulous tomatoes growing on waste ground in Madeira. I think a house had been demolished there and perhaps veg had been left in what was once a garden. I'm trying chilli's this year from seeds I took from a scotch bonnet chilli. They germinated within days. Love all this experimenting we're doing.

We are fighting mildew on the tomatoes. Managing it so far, but if it gets a hold you lose the whole crop, has happened to us twice in 15 years. Trick is to keep up with copper sulphate (it's o rganic). Especially if it's rainy, hot and humid. We're spraying it at least once a week at the moment.

Even here in SoF, although quite high, cucumbers are a lot better under glass, tend to be a bit bitter without.

Green peppers won't turn red without lots of sun.

Bit early for aubergines.

I've got 3 varieties of tomatoes: Alicante, Gardeners Delight and Tumbler. All going very well but I'm struggling to get to the 2 in the greenh because the cucumber is like something out of Little Shop of Horrors!

Yes, I read about spraying the tomato plants with 1 aspirin dissolved in a litre of water, strengthening the immunity towards diseases like blight and mildew.