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.