Sunday 17 July 2011

Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is a pastime for the patient type of gardener - they take a long time to come to maturity and demand a lot of attention if they are to do well, but in my opinion all this is worthwhile when you get good results. There are few veggies pleasanter than a home-grown tomato.

Most of mine are still a long way from being ripe. There are a couple of fruit showing colour on the "Maskotka" and "Tumbling Junior Yellow" bush-type plants, but only a couple.

Maskotka

Most of them are still very small and green.

Tumbling Junior Yellow

The "Tropical Ruby" plant is absolutely covered with flowers.


But so far only one or two fruit have formed. I was initially concerned that this photo was out of focus, because the fruit in the centre of it looked blurry, but if you look closely you can see that the blurriness is actually due to the mass of little hairs on the fruit. I wonder what texture the fruit will have when it's ripe?


The big cordon-style plants outside the Living-Room doors have grown pretty tall (about 4 to 5 feet) .
I usually pinch them out when they get taller than their supporting canes, otherwise they go top-heavy and could fall over - especially if I get a heavy crop!


They have mostly got three or four trusses of fruit now. The fruits are still very small. I don't expect to get any ripe ones for at least another month - maybe six weeks.


I wonder how this one will do. It's a young plant of the very compact variety "Wilma", grown from a volunteer seedling rescued from one of the raised beds. Last year I grew a couple like this, but they succumbed to disease.



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P.S. I harvested the first few ripe tomatoes on Friday evening. I've cropped the photo to make them look more impressive, but in reality they are posed on a very small dish!


OK, so there were only four, and they were small ones (Maskota - the red ones, and Tumbling Junior Yellow), but they were absolutely delicious. Nothing can beat the flavour of freshly-picked home-grown totmatoes. I think resisting the temptation to keep them in the fridge is important. Tomatoes that have never been in the fridge taste better, there's no doubt about it.

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P.S.

For the Chilli enthusiasts (and others...) You might be interested to have a look at Craig McKnight's blog WeGrowOurOwn. He has posted a number of video posts about growing and caring for chillis. And of course don't forget to visit chillipepperheaven from time to time.

14 comments:

  1. Your 'matos are coming along nicely!! Bravo!

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  2. Patience is a virtue and with it comes a truly delicious reward.

    Still recon we've got a month to wait too!

    Have a good day!

    Martin :0)

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  3. Maskotka is a new one to me, I'll have to look it up. Yours certainly looks to be loaded with fruits. Tropical Ruby sounds interesting too..look at all those flowers.:) Thanks for the chilli link.

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  4. Your plants look so very healthy Mark, and I agree with you that the tomato is probably the king of home grown produce. Mine have done miserably this year but I am very lucky in that the self sown ones are doing fabulously well!

    How many flowers does your tropical ruby have!

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  5. Looking good! Ours are just about getting there too. I can't wait! Or, I hate to wait.

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  6. Such healthy tomato plants! I haven't seen tomatoes with hair on them. Thanks for pointing it out.

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  7. Mark, those photos are great, cropped or otherwise. I'm growing them for the first time and didn't appreciate the need to tie them to canes. As a a result they're all going for a wander across the soil. I hope they still fruit, although I'm a confessed tomato hater (do see my blog post on the torment this is causing -

    http://tomskitchengarden.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-did-usain-bolt-say-to-tomato.html

    Any words of encouragement most welcome!

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  8. Looking good. I agree with you that there are few veggies pleasanter than home grown tomatoes. I think they're my favourite thing to grow, perhaps it's because we do have to wait so long from sowing to eating and there's great expectation of what's to come. You're growing varieties which I'm not familiar with.

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  9. Good to see your tomato plants. Hmmm, mine are tall and lanky. You seem to have loads of flowers (more than my Red Cherry plant). Hard not to compare, I just hape I manage to get a bowl full of tomatoes.

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  10. Can't wait to see you red theme harvest Mark! Tomatoes and chillies. It will be a beautiful sight to watch them dangling.

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  11. We have a variety of tomato called Blondkopfchen (which apparently means Little Blonde Girl so it's very appropriate for me). It's absolutely loaded with flowers making the stems bend so goodness knows what will happen when the tomatoes form - fortunately they are cherry sized!

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  12. Your tomatoes are doing much better than mine. I have a few green tomatoes, one plant is a mass of flowers, another not, and another neither flowering nor growing very high. It's pelting with rain and the wind is blowing and the runner beans say they don't like such weather.

    Esther

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  13. Bah, computer crashed before my comment had been accepted! It basically said, nice tomatoes, and that if I could only grow one edible it would be toms. Enjoy the harvest! I am braced for a sudden glut when all those green fruit start ripening...

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  14. Thanks for the tip on website, I'll check out WeGrowOurOwn

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