When you arrive home after having been away for a while, a look round the garden is always an early priority, and that normally means an opportunity to see what's ready for picking. Today I was able to pick quite a decent harvest. In my bowl this time are loads more beans and tomatoes, a few raspberries and a few finger carrots.
They say that one way of ensuring you get a good balance of nutrients is to eat veggies of many different colours. I should be healthy enough with this lot!
One of the things I picked was a couple of the Rainbow Beefsteak tomatoes. Before I went away I thought the fruits on one of the plants were turning orange. Today, I found that their colour had not changed radically, but they just looked ripe. Feeling them, I found they were quite soft. So I picked one and cut it open to see what it was like. It confirmed my suspicion: this is a green Beefsteak tomato plant.
I have to say that from the outside the fruits didn't look too promising. They had a rather brown tinge, and the stem end had a few imperfections. From the inside though, the position was very different. The fruits have very little in the way of pips and they tasted great.
I have to confess to a slight tinge of disappointment though. I really had hoped the fruit would turn out to be orange, or pink or 'black'. And also, I feel as if they have stolen the thunder of the long-awaited "Green Zebra", which I know is going to have green fruit, and which was going to have been my first-ever ripe green tomato.
Elsewhere in the garden there is good news and bad: the brassicas are looking a lot better. Even the plants that were attacked by the Cabbage Root Fly now look as if they will survive after all. The climbing beans are going strong, and some of the pods are beginning to dry out, with plenty of plump beans inside. The recently planted-out peas are already producing flowers, despite being only about 30cm tall - presumably they sense that Autumn is not far away. On the other hand, many of the Endives have bolted before maturing, and the Swiss Chard and Perpetual Spinach are full of disfiguring leaf-miners which will render many of the leaves unuseable, and some of the golden beetroot are beginning to bolt. You can't win 'em all, can you?
Back to work tomorrow, so not much opportunity for gardening or photography until next weekend...
That plate of beautifully colored veggies and fruits would compose a delicious, healthy meal!
ReplyDeleteYour tomatoes look great Mark, I also have had some recently that didn't look so good on the outside, but inside were just delicious. I really think that if I only had space for one thing it would be tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely eating a rainbow there!
ReplyDeleteI'm always eager to check everything out once I'm home from holiday. I've never grown green tomatoes so it's interesting to see your's.
ReplyDeleteGreen isn't the first colour that comes to mind when you say rainbow is it, poorly named perhaps....ahh well its all in the taste. Having said that I am still always thrown by tomato sauce made with ripe green tomatoes the brain seems to go through some sort of disconnect and I can only taste it properly with my eyes shut. Weird how these things work.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back.
ReplyDeleteWhat a rainbow harvest.
As from tomorrow, I'm travelling down south to check out new rental abode etc - days in Scotland are def. limited. This is way of saying, that the next few days I have scheduled a few posts (almost a weeks worth) - lets see how it works, as it will be my first time posting it this way.
Glad you came back to mostly healthy plants Mark, sorry about your chard and beetroot.
ReplyDeleteGood job with those carrots look good since I knew its not easy to grow them there because of those carrotflies. Colourful healthy harvest.
ReplyDelete