Sunday 7 September 2008

Good News and Bad News

What do you want first - the good or the bad news? OK - the bad first. My polytunnel tomatoes are showing signs of blight ..... bother, bother, bother (or words to that effect!). And being as I planted them out late and it has not been a sunny summer not many have ripened yet. So with the onset of this horrible disease I have picked all the red and all the "starting to turn red" tomatoes and am watching the others very closely. If the blight seems to spread I will pick everything and hope at least some will ripen without getting blight and with the remaining healthy green ones I shall be making chutney and trying green tomato fritters for the first time.

There is, however, as promised good news. I have been picking cherry tomatoes for a few weeks now and have just started to harvest the large beefsteaks. (I have no normal sized ones which must have been the plants I lost earlier in the year). The picture shows those I harvested this morning and whilst I don't normally weight things, I did feel that huge tomato warranted me finding my scales. It weighed in at a healthy 925 grams (2lb 1.5oz in old money). From this haul I have made 3 batches of roast cherry tomatoes, one pot of passata and 2 lentil and tomato bakes. I will make more passata later and the green tomatoes will be placed in a cool dark place with a banana to speed up the ripening process. Maybe not quite the tomato harvest I had expected but not a complete loss.

8 comments :

  1. I'm impressed with that beef tomato!

    and sorry to read about your blight....its not been a good year for stuff has it...

    We have just lifted all the carrots and quite a few have just rotted in the sodden soil...

    :-((

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  2. Sorry to hear about the blight. We lost all our tomatoes a couple of weeks ago to this. Most disheartening!

    Still, that beefsteak one is a monster - enjoy!

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  3. Terrible year for the toms down here too.

    But the ten peppers which were planted slap bang next to the tomatoes (and are also nightshades) as part of the same rotation have been doing extrordinarily well. We started cutting green peppers at the rate of three of four per week about two months ago and are now cutting red ones at the rate of one or two a day.

    There seems to be no end to the flood.

    I'm not complaining.

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  4. sorry bout the blight.. but looks like you have a good harvest anyways..i have blight on my gardeners delight in one greenhosue. boo. but getting lots of toms anyway, and ok in the other greenhosue.

    still green tomatoes = sweet curried green tomato chutney.. and thats no bad thing!

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  5. Thanks for the comments everyone - the tomtotoes are hanging on in there at the moment but I think I will pick all the decent sized ones today and see if they will ripen - if I leave them any longer they will only rot.

    We had fried green tomatoes for lunch yesterday and I am planning cucumber and green tomato relish and the obligatory green tomato chutney - sweet curry green tomato chutney sounds great Colouritgreen - any chance of the recipe?

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  6. http://www.colouritgreen.co.uk/greentomatochutney.htm

    i invented it last year and we liked it so much we planned to harvest green toms specially (looks like the blight is helping us!)
    really easy to make

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  7. http://www.colouritgreen.co.uk/greentomatochutney.htm

    forgot the m...

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  8. Thanks for the recipe Colouritgreen - sounds just what I need instead of mango chutney which is hideously expensive and hard to get here.

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