Monday, 29 August 2016

Bumper harvest of tomatoes

I had a bumper harvest of tomatoes yesterday. I picked about 2 kg of tomatoes, and that was just the very ripe ones and the ones that fell off when I was picking the very ripe ones. I made tomato sauce with pasta with a kilo of them, gave some to a neighbour and need to find more neighbours to give the rest to. There are still plenty of ripe ones left on the plants.
Based on their size, I think the majority of the tomatoes that have ripened so far for me are Gardener's Delight. This leaves me in a bit of a quandary, as based on a taste test, I think I prefer Moneymaker, which are sweeter and less sharp. I don't think I've had many of those yet this season though. I think about 95% of my harvest has been Gardener's Delight, which seems to produce more and ripen quicker. Either that or I'm wrongly attributing variety based on size and rough location in the plot. Either way, it leaves me wondering what it's best to plant next year.
Tomatoes have been my most successful crop this year and I have discovered that you neither need to stake them nor cut away leaves to expose the tomatoes to the sun to get a good crop. Many of mine are hidden behind leaves - possibly also protecting them from pests - although the fact this has been possible may be due to their prime sun position in the garden. The down side of this approach is that the tomato patch looks like a mess.
It's hard to tell from a distance, but even after that mega-harvest, it's still full of ripe tomatoes.

Mind you, they are in the sunniest part of the garden, in the bed that last year produced my most bountiful crop. Last year it was squashes, and I'm doing pretty well on squashes this year, but I don't think they'll rival my tomatoes for sheer volume.
In less good news, my corn ripened earlier this year than it did last year, so I again left harvesting it too late and only managed to eat two cobs at correct ripeness. They're now busy drying out on the plant, and if they manage to dry nicely I hope to be able to use them for popcorn or maybe in stews or other recipes I find on the Internet for dried corn.
I am, however, regularly harvesting runner beans and am still getting a pretty decent crop.

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