Silly Season

With sunshine comes the silly season! I predict that each evening's conversation for the next few weeks won't vary much from "Beans with that AGAIN dear?" or "Tomatoes tonight...for a change".

The long awaited summer (ahem...fingers crossed) is bringing with it a glut of beans and all the tomatoes changing at once. I can see them now - they've all been hanging back until now and then BOOM time to ripen!! At least with both tomatoes and beans the freezer comes in very handy or it would if it was empty...hence the manic manufacturing of rhubarb crumble, defrosting of blueberries for breakfast (yeugh - beloved husband can have those...what on earth was I thinking about when I bought them??) and using up of ancient stock which probably could do with being used up anyway! Will there be enough space in the freezer or will we need to buy a new one? Only time will tell.

Who Needs Leaves???

Looks like my experimental de-leafing is working a treat as the tomatoes on those plants which have had a substantial amount of foliage removed start to ripen!

















Unfortunately one of the plants looked a little blackened on the stem so rather than risk the possibility of blight the plant was quickly removed this morning. I'm still not 100% sure it was blight but there was one black and rotten tomato (removed two days ago) and the stem looked a little iffy HOWEVER it looked perfectly healthy further up the stem. Anyway there was only one decent sized tomato on the stalk so I decided on balance it was worth the loss.




I'm going to cover up the stalk and hope that if there was any blight it won't spread through the roots...there are FAR too many of those to remove and is not really very practical.




Always remember to clean your tools - my secateurs are currently soaking in bleach!

Going Bananas in my Pyjamas!

I'm trying out the theory that bananas ripen other fruit by draping a manky old banana skin (kindly donated by someone at work - nice!) over my beautiful green Vanessa FI tomatoes...will it work? Who knows but at least I'm feeding the butterfly and insect population in the process even though my tomato plants will end up looking like a compost bin!!














This morning I was out in the garden in my pyjamas trying to convince the damn things to go red using the well-known 'you-WILL-ripen' staring technique. I find that this highly therapeutic technique is not only widely used throughout gardening circles but is often applied with slightly different end results in mind in the kitchen when waiting for the kettle to boil and in the rest of house when waiting for paint to dry.

117 Green Tomatoes Hanging on the Wall

It could be more but I gave up counting at 117!!! This year has been a really interesting one re tomatoes - firstly ALL 49 of my seedlings grew - probably something to do with having a propagator and a greenhouse. I managed to palm off some on friends and family but in the end I had to keep 30 plants (five of which only just made it into the garden because my beloved husband couldn't bear to chuck 'em). The plants are split between growbags outside, pots in the greenhouse and the garden itself. Interestingly the ones outside seem to be doing really well especially the Vanessa F1, Beam's Yellow Pear, Roma and Purple Cherokee in the size stakes. Tigerella and Ananas Noire seem to prefer the warmth of the greenhouse although the others are hardly struggling; they just haven't swollen as much.

Outdoor Purple Cherokee.














I am cultivating a wonderful crop of green tomatoes - green beefsteaks, green stripy ones, green slightly different stripy ones, green pear-shaped ones...the list is endless of beautiful green tomatoes.










Lovely green Ananas Noire.



We have had some visitors along the way...













And we've also had the odd crisis - here the bamboo canes had started to rot and collapsed under the weight of the tomatoes. I had to remove a lot of foliage and just hope that there was still connective tissue in the stem!












Happy days have eventually arrived on my birthday when a telephone call came through from my sister declaring a national celebration because...I had a yellow tomato and one turning red...or was it purple??

Back After Three Months!

And what a three months!! Sitting at the desk in my previous job did nothing to encourage me to blog in the evenings; I was still getting the sciatic pain so sitting at the home computer was not appealing so I just didn't! Left the last job in early June - hoorah as it was not really a great role anyway - and went on hols to Switzerland which was just magnificent. Photos to be edited in at a later time.

We were away for two weeks in June and the tomatoes were just in their infancy so our fabulous next door neighbour kindly watered them whilst we were away - we had spent a small fortune on irrigation equipment so all she had to do was literally flick a switch and after half an hour switch it off again. She was great though and watered all the young plants which I had not had a chance to plant out - it certainly helps to have a garden-lover as a neighbour. For two weeks after the hols I enjoyed the luxury of being unemployed and I got a thoroughly well-deserved two weeks of hot, hot and phew goddam it's hot weather. I developed a lovely I-know-its-bad-for-me-but-I-like-it tan just through pottering in the garden during the day; in fact it was so hot that I actually heeded advice and stayed out of the midday sun. I'm neither a mad dog nor an EnglishMAN.

I managed to get my cucumbers in at last - they survived me being away but they really needed to go into larger containers. I chose the walkway past the shed as a perfect place, which would get nice and warm and keep them toasty and happy. I didn't have much success with the cukes last year inside with only three fruits being viable. I was hoping my Long Whites would be better outside this year.