Posts Tagged ‘tomatoes’

Trays of tomatoes… and strawberry corner

Today was spent potting up tomato seedlings (see below), and also moving some sluggish strawberry plants from the back garden to the front, where they will in theory get several hours of sun a day rather than just half an hour or so. The display of strawberry plants in the corner actually looks quite attractive in its own right, I think. Of course, the roofless greenhouse to their left (not seen in pic) is definitely NOT a thing of loveliness, but it does act as a convenient shelf for more long trays of strawberry plants. Who knows, I might actually end up picking a dozen strawberries a day at the height of the season, rather than six or so as I did last year. To pot up the strawberries into their respective containers, I used neat home-made compost – which should mean that they’ll be happy! I wish I could be self-sufficient in compost, because that’s easily my biggest expense as a container gardener. Back in March, I syphoned off a good amount of nearly-rotted compost from our Dalek into the hole next to it; six weeks later under its layer of old carpet/bathmat, it’s now ready to use but I need more!

How to sow tomato seeds easily… and how to protect seed trays from marauding cats

This week is the first week of spring in our household. One reason for designating this particular week as the official end of winter is the fact that we can now close our front door for the first time this year. Every year, in cold/wet weather, it expands (or the door frame shrinks – one or the other), making it impossible to shut. Luckily we have a second, inner door that also locks so it’s not a huge problem – just something of a nuisance.

The second event marking the official start of spring chez Mr & Mrs Beans is the planting of this year’s tomato seeds – Brandywine and Gardener’s Delight (which will be followed by Tumbling Tom, on order from a seller on eBay). Like any small seeds, tomato seeds are fiddly to plant. I’ve evolved a method of doing so, which involves emptying them into a bowl and using a moist finger to pick them up one at a time, and plonk them on the surface of the compost in the tray. (Your hands may already be moist anyway, from handling the compost.)

For the next week or two while the seeds germinate, the seed trays will sit on our dining table. Lest our cats decide that they make nifty litter boxes, I’ve covered them with wire cake trays. (You can’t be too careful when it comes to cats, I’ve realised.)

Have also planted six mouse melon seeds – should be interesting to see if they come up.

And now for something a little bit healthier

This little Brandywine beauty had been sitting on our kitchen windowsill for a couple of weeks, slowly ripening. We ate it on Sunday with our customary fry-up. Just the raw, meaty slices – no cooking required. There are still a few more Brandywines left, plus some cherry tomatoes. I shall convert most of the latter into a spaghetti bolognaise today. We had over three pounds of green tomatoes too, which Mr Beans made chutney from last week. This weekend I finally chopped down our tomato plants, distributed the compost on our roses and placed the actual plants in a sack. Kindly neighbour lady is going to take them to her allotment for burning (along with the trimmings from when I pruned said roses).

I am in two minds about whether to save some Brandywine seeds, as I did last year. I didn’t take care to separate the varieties of container tomatoes so there may have been some cross pollination, which could turn out to have interesting results next year! Think I’ll order some pure-bred seeds on eBay but maybe try growing some saved seeds as an experiment.

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.

At last, runner beans. But not tomatoes. Yet.

Today I picked our first roast dinner-for-two sized handful of runner beans. (I had picked four or five beans earlier this week, but they don’t count.) Obviously the lateness of the beans is down to our dreary summer, but actually looking back at last year’s posts, the beans aren’t that late – maybe a week or so, perhaps.

The same cannot be said of our tomatoes, none of which are ripe yet. This time last year we were picking Gardener’s Delights and hanging basket toms every single day. This year, there are a few Gardener’s Delights which look almost on the point of turning red, but none of them are actually edible yet. We do have hundreds of tiny green fruit though. My feeling is that all our tomatoes will ripen at once in mid-August, thus prompting a frantic session of cooking: freezer portions of tomato, onion and garlic pasta sauce on the one hand, and chutney on the other. Mr Beans makes fabulous chutney.

I’m glad I never bothered with courgettes this year. I think I will wait until the sunspot cycle does its thing and we’re back to sizzling summers again.

Tomato recovery after hailstorm

Last month’s hailstorm had a horrible effect on my tomato plants but they’re now doing nicely thank you, although due to the rubbish summer we’re having they are lagging behind somewhat. Plenty of flowers, but no fruit yet. On this exact day last year, I was picking the first of my hanging basket tomatoes, so that puts it into perspective. The tomatoes on the steps (see pic immediately below) are Moneymaker and Brandywine. The ones in the pic below are Gardener’s Delight and the basket just visible to the right of them has Tumbling Toms (even those are still just at the flower stage – it really is a late year). The dried straw-like husky things you can see in the top pic are the Green in Snow Oriental mustard seed pods I mentioned in the previous post.

Gardener’s Delight

Insane hailstorm!

What follows isn’t going to be pretty. It consists of a “before” and “after” picture, the “after” being my sorrel after experiencing the most incredible thunder/hailstorm I’ve ever seen at first hand. (Think three inch deep rainwater and hailstones the size of large peas.) If you’re of a sensitive disposition, look away now.

My sorrel a few days ago

...and after

Scary, huh? But the thing I really threw a wobbly over was my tomatoes – there are snapped stalks and broken off leaves everywhere, although I think some of them will survive.

and

By the time I thought of sheltering the tomatoes under a sheet of plastic (the detached roof off one of my greenhouses), it was too late – the damage had been done.

These are the very tomatoes I spent three hours lovingly potting up during the first weekend in May, before potting them on last week into their final containers, using a 50/50 mix of home-made and shop-bought compost. I will be gutted if I don’t at least have some surviving ones.

Tomato seedlings everywhere…

The picture immediately below shows this year’s tomato seedlings as they were on April 8th, one week ago. The picture at the bottom shows them yesterday, after I’d spent a large part of the afternoon potting on the Brandywines. All the Brandywine seeds I saved came up, and there were over forty of them. I only threw a few of them away – as there’s no way I will have the room in the garden to grow forty Brandywine tomato plants (to say nothing of the three other varieties I’ve planted), I will have to find some willing recipients among the neighbours. First in line is the guy from round the corner who gave me an envelope filled with sunflower seeds a couple of weeks back. One good turn deserves another! They’re the sort of sunflowers that grow to enormous heights, and they will cheer up the front garden no end. I have planted half a dozen of the seeds in little pots in our mini greenhouse. Not the conventional way of doing it, but I know that if I put them straight in the ground the birds will have them in no time.

The planks of wood you can see outside in the second picture are the remains of our barrel, after which this blog is named. Sadly the wood finally rotted so much that it started to crumble away, and the barrel was a bit of an eyesore. Its place may at some point be taken over by our dustbin, which is no longer needed for storing rubbish since Thanet Council so generously gave us a wheelie bin. Don’t think I’ll be changing the name of the blog though… somehow “Beans in a Dustbin” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Planted my tomato seeds today

In keeping with my resolution from last year, I held off planting any tomato seeds until today, April 1st. Hopefully I won’t thus be stuck with a load of indoor seedlings that have gone leggy due to lack of sunlight. Although we’re getting some nice sunny days, it’s still quite cool and I’ve noticed that my spring onions (planted a good couple of weeks ago) still haven’t come up, presumably due to low temperatures. Well, I hope it’s due to low temperatures and not seed failure lol.

Anyway, tomato varieties planted today were: Gardener’s Delight (of course), Mamande, Moneymaker and the Brandywine seeds that I saved last year. Fingers crossed that they come up, because I’m already salivating at the thought of Brandywine tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. Long wait for that though. I will be splashing out on some more Tumbling Tom hanging basket tomato seeds, because they were so gorgeous last time.

Haven’t done any other gardening other than a massive tidy-up a couple of weeks back (and planting of the aforementioned spring onion seeds). The next project will be to transfer the contents of the barrel in our front garden into a galvanised dustbin, which is no longer needed for its original purpose because dear old Thanet Council has given us wheelie bins. The barrel has come to the end of its life – its wooden bits are rotting and it’s no longer an attractive thing at all. Maybe I will have more success at producing a viable courgette crop using the dustbin than I did with the barrel.