Posts Tagged ‘tomatoes’

It’s been a tomato-tastic summer…

After a mini heatwave over the last week or so, my tomatoes are still ripening outside. The Gardener’s Delights and Gardener’s Pearl are pretty much over, although there are still some green ones left. We’re just waiting for a consignment of pickling vinegar to arrive at our local greengrocer – when it does, my other half is going to get to work on some green tomato & apple chutney! He made some last year and it was delicious.

I am still picking semi-ripe (well, quarter-ripe) Brandywine tomatoes and putting them on the windowsill – there are about half a dozen of them still left on the vine outside our front window. When the weather breaks, they’re all coming inside to take their chances – if they ripen, all well and good; if they don’t, it’s chutney time for them too.

Speaking of Brandywine tomatoes, I notice that the seed company I bought them from isn’t doing them this year, so I’ve had a go at saving the seeds. I put them in a little dish of water for a few days and when the water had gone all scummy, I washed the seeds gently in a strainer to get rid of the pulp, then placed them to dry on a coffee filter paper. That’s where they’ll stay for another week, until I put them in a ziplock bag and store them in the fridge till next April. Fingers crossed that the seeds come up, ‘cos Brandywine is a delicious beef tomato that tastes fab in sandwiches, with fry-ups and (my favourite way of eating them) chopped up with mozarella cheese, basil and olives, and sprinkled with extra virgin olive oil, freshly ground pepper and a bit of salt. Nom nom nom…

The first of the brandywine tomatoes

This is the very first of my brandywine tomatoes, picked exactly a week ago and eaten with mozzarella and fresh basil, lightly drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. It was lovely – the taste wasn’t intense (but then again you don’t expect it with tomatoes of this size/type), but it was very pleasant and the texture of the flesh was lovely and velvety. In other words, not at all like the beefsteak tomatoes you often get in the shops. As well as being an out-there shape, this specimen was an out-there size, too – about five inches across the bottom! It will be a while before any of its fellows are ripe enough to pick so int the meantime we’ll have to content ourselves with the Gardener’s Pearls and Gardener’s Delights, which are coming in a steady stream at the moment!

Basket of beans!

Most of the rest of the country seems to be experiencing a total meltdown at the moment, with rioting, looting etc. So here is something nice to look at: what I picked from the containers in our front garden this morning:

The tomatoes are the first of the Gardener’s Delights (there were a couple before these but now they’re starting for real), plus there’s a small One Ball courgette.

Things I’ve learned this year – part 1

I have learned a few things this year which I will be taking on board for next year’s gardening activities, and I thought I’d put them in this blog because that way, I’ll be able to find the list! So, here goes:

1. When it comes to planting tomato seeds indoors, don’t do it too early. Early to mid-April will be fine – it’s only people who grow their tomatoes in a greenhouse or conservatory who can get away with doing it earlier.
2. This year, I am really kicking myself for growing the Gardener’s Pearl variety of cherry tomatoes as opposed to Tumbling Tom, as I did last year. Although the Tumbling Tom seeds were humungously expensive, the fruit were DELICIOUS. The Gardener’s Pearls are OK, but bland – better for cooking than eating.
3. Use big containers for courgettes – buckets with a 14 or 15 inch diameter, at least.
4. Two varieties of courgette which seem to be happy with container living and give nice yields are One Ball and Golden Zucchini. I don’t know if the fact that they are both yellow has anything to do with it. Just mulch ’em regularly with home-made compost and water them generously.
5. Boot fairs and charity shops are great places to buy cheap plants if you don’t want to grow everything from seed.
6. Order a bulk lot of compost early on – litre for litre, it works out half the price of the titchy little bags.
7. Planting dried peas in a container (yes, those dried peas you get in supermarkets) gives amazingly good results – a small but steady supply of pea shoots and tiny mange-tout.
8. A top tip from a man I know who lives around the corner and also grows veg: plant nasturtiums near your runner beans. Any blackfly will eat the nasturtiums and leave the beans alone. EDIT: don’t bother with this one – he reckons that the nasturtiums were what encouraged the blackfly in the first place, and has since got rid of them. Result: no more blackfly.

And finally, here is a picture of Lottie standing guard among the elephant garlic:

Gardener’s Pearls

The first of the Gardener’s Pearls are ripening, as you can see. They taste OK but nowhere near as good as last year’s Tumbling Toms, which were out of this world. Fine for cooking though. The first Brandywines are appearing, ditto the faithful Gardener’s Delights. Soon be time for home-made tomato sauce, mmmmmm.

More tomato stuff

Yesterday I potted up four of my Brandywine tomato plants into a trough filled with a 50/50 mixture of home made compost and bog standard container compost, bought from Aldi. I’ve chucked a lot of the other Brandywine seedlings out because they just looked too wind- and/or sun-scorched. Ditto some of the Gardener’s Pearl, although I did pot up seven of those into hanging baskets. They’re all going to have to take their chances in the big outdoors now, anyway.

Next year I shall plant my tomatoes a bit later – say, the middle of April, so that I can transfer them outside asap without having to worry about them being damaged by the elements! This part of England is a bit deceptive; it’s sunny and hot (compared with say, Manchester), but the April winds do blow ‘cos we’re surrounded on three sides by the sea!

Sunburn on my tomatoes!

Here’s a tip for all you tomato growers out there: when you harden off your tomato plants, don’t put them in bright sunlight – at least, not for the first few days anyway. The poor things get sunburn (or leaf burn if you want to use the technical term)! This is particularly true of my Brandywine tomatoes; the other two varieties I’m growing (Gardener’s Delight and Gardener’s Pearl) don’t seem to be as bothered by the sun. Apparently (see here), the thing to do is put your tomato plants in a shady spot for the first few days of hardening off, and then they’ll be OK. And don’t get water on the leaves, either.

Brandywine tomato seedlings part deux

This is what the Brandywine seedlings look like now I’ve potted them up into individual pots. (It’s Saturday as I write this and the potting up took place on Wednesday. Took me ages, because I had to (a) find enough suitable pots in the corners of the garden, and (b) rinse them off to remove dead snails/spider eggs/worms.) Anyway, the Brandywine seedlings are the ones at the back – the ones towards the front are Gardener’s Pearl. They’ve got smooth-edged leaves, rather than the slightly curly-edged ones that you expect on tomatoes. Today I also potted up ten Gardener’s Delight seedlings, so all being well it should be a tomatotastic summer again!

Brandywine tomato seedlings

Well, I planted the Brandywine tomato seeds and here, about a fortnight later, is what the resulting seedlings look like. They will need to be transferred to individual pots very soon. I’ve also got a few seedlings of something called Gardener’s Pearl, which is a hanging basket tomato (it came as part of a big packet of mixed tomato and basil seeds, which I bought from my local pound shop last year). I was going to plant Tumbling Toms again this year, but what with the Brandywine, the Gardener’s Pearl and some good ol’ Gardener’s Delight that I’ve also just planted, I think the Tumbling Toms would be overkill. Even we can’t eat that much chutney LOL.

My online seeds have arrived

Today I’ve been outside cleaning seed trays, ready to plant tomato seeds. Speaking of which, the ones I ordered online (a variety called Brandywine) arrived in the post today, along with packets of rainbow chard, mizuna, giant red mustard and another Oriental leafy thing called Green In Snow. There’ll be lots of stir frying going on in a few months’ time!

The Brandywine variety of tomato is described on the Tamar Organics site/seed packet as “a large pink-fruited tomato regarded by many as the best flavoured”. If it lives up to its billing, I will be a very happy tomato eater 😆