Posts Tagged ‘tumbling tom’

Tomato time

It’s the second week in September, and the tomatoes are *just* hitting their stride. I’ve sliced a couple of Brandywines and fried them with our Sunday bacon and egg, and for the last two weeks we’ve been enjoying a small but steady supply of Gardener’s Delights and Tumbling Toms in salads. Today I made a tomato sauce to go with pork meatballs and linguine. I love this time of year.

Using a strawberry planter for Tumbling Tom tomatoes

As of last week I have been feasting off the strawberries in containers in our front garden – although sadly, the ****ing snails are feasting off them too. I make a point of doing a “snail check” every morning and evening, and any that I find get unceremoniously chucked into the shrubbery on the other side of our front path. I don’t use slug pellets (don’t want to cause harm to local bird/cat life), so the snail checks are the price I pay. But the strawberries are worth it. Amidst the strawberries is this fine terracotta strawberry planter, which I’ve planted with… Tumbling Tom tomatoes. My neighbour from three doors down gave me the planter – he doesn’t have time to garden right now so I’ve promised him some of the fruits of my labour. (In case you’re wondering, the two tomato plants growing out of the top of the planter are Gardener’s Delight.) All my tomatoes are doing OK a week after being potted up. None of them have flowered yet though – don’t think we’ll be eating any home grown tomatoes till August.

From colanders to containers

I’m quite proud of my ingenuity on this one. Basically, I’m very mean when it comes to spending actual money on my garden. So rather than shell out £££ on some hanging baskets to plant my Tumbling Tom cherry tomato plants, I bought a couple of old colanders at a local church jumble sale. This one is suspended from a metal bracket via the handle from a bucket, and held in place with a wire coat hanger. It doesn’t exactly look elegant, but at least it’s nice and secure. The white bits you can see in the photo are a piece of old net curtain, which has been used to line the colander and prevent the compost from coming out through the holes. Today I could just see some tiny flower buds on my Tumbling Tom plants. I hope the fruit will be worth eating, because the seeds were very expensive – nearly £3.00 for the packet!