Archive for September, 2012

Tomatoes on a windowsill – a cautionary tale

The picture on the right shows what happens if you put your tomatoes on a sunny windowsill to ripen, and you let them touch the window rather than leaving a gap. You have been warned. Sadly, I ended up throwing this specimen, and three of its equally sad mates, away. Ideally, you want to set your ripening tomatoes at least an inch back from the actual window. Having said that, it’s nice to have actually had some sun. So far, September is proving to be more summery than June, July & August put together. And despite the windowsill mishap, we have been enjoying tomato salads for the last couple of weeks.

Tomatoes. One month late.

This groaning set of shelves, with cunningly placed plastic mug risers, would have graced our kitchen about a month ago, if we’d had a normal summer. But as everyone in Britain knows, this hasn’t been a normal summer. We’re only eating tomatoes at all this year because I’ve been obsessive when it comes to looking after them – cutting off the bottom leaves (this ensures that the growing fruits get more nutrients), putting them in the sunniest places possible (ha ha), and feeding them with comfrey tea every now and again. And because I take them indoors to ripen off the moment they even start to look as though they might go yellow.

What you see on the shelf (apart from two figs – also a month late) is pretty well all the tomato varieties I planted this year: Gardener’s Delight, Moneymaker, Mamande and Tumbling Tom. The only one that isn’t there is Brandywine. I do have some Brandywines coming along, but they’re not even ripe enough to pick yet. Fingers crossed that we have an Indian summer, otherwise Mr Beans will be making chutney out of them.

PS: The caravan parked outside isn’t ours. I don’t know why I felt I had to point that out.