Ever wondered how you can grow twice as many tomatoes in a cold greenhouse?

Maurice Mason of Scarborough shared this method with the BBC North Yorkshire Down to Earth team.

How to harvest twice as many tomatoes in half the time in a cold greenhouse.

This method of growing tomatoes will not be found in any book

It is normal to grow a single stem with maybe 10 trusses but the time it takes for the few trusses to form is too long for our summers - autumn comes too soon for these to ripen and then the dampness starts, rot sets in and the crop is lost.

By watching the plants, they almost talk to you - their habit just needs encouraging. It doesn’t matter whether you grow your own from seed or buy in, it’s how you handle them that matters.

The Plant
When ready for potting on, put the plant into the bottom of the pot on one inch of compost (use whichever you like best) then cover the root ball with one inch of compost only.

As the plant grows, the side shoots will appear. The king shoot is the strongest but the books say you should remove it because it saps the plant’s energy, but because of its strength, its telling you something - SO LEAVE IT ON.

The king shoot is immediately below the first truss. Let it grow and side shoot it as well as the main stem.

So now we have two main stems - and as a truss sets on one stem it does so on the other stem - so we have two trusses at the same time.

On Midsummer’s day nip out the top of the plant above the topmost flowering trusses. When you have done this, the plant can only make fruit - and do not let any more side shoots grow at all.

You will normally have four trusses on each side plus the one below the king shoot, making nine in all. You now have the rest of the summer for the fruit to grow and ripen. Any flowers produced after midsummer’s day have no chance of maturing in our short summer.

The roots
I if you look at the stem just above the compost you will see small bumps - these are root nodes waiting to grow, so when you add another inch of compost a new ring of vigorous roots form - keep adding compost at stages until the pot is full to the top.

Feeding
At each new layer of compost, you may add a gentle feed of whatever you use, anything is better than nothing. The books say a liquid feed once a week - I say a weak solution every other day until all the fruit is large"

Let us know how you get on with your tomatoes. Send us an e-mail: northyorkshire.radio@bbc.co.uk