Monday 28 September 2015

Harvesting

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With the nights being so chilly, I decided to pick all our remaining tomatoes as the leaves on the plants were rapidly turning purple with the cold!
They can now use the free heat in the conservatory to change colour. On the kitchen windowsill meanwhile, is about our 5th basket of cherry tomatoes:
We still have another bowl in the fridge plus the ones in the conservatory. I reckon we have easily had 15 - 20lbs of tomatoes this year. When you consider they have all been grown outside in such a poor summer, that is quite good!

Tomatoes and beans have been our best harvests this year. Everything else, except fruit, has been rubbish. Ah well, there is always next year:)

8 comments:

  1. Blimey that's a good harvest of tomatoes. I picked all the last of my outdoor tomatoes yesterday and have laid them on a tray in the conservatory. They'll either ripen, or they won't.......

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    1. The bigger ones probably account for some of the weight! I usually find they ripen well indoors but tend to makes the skins a little firmer.

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  2. I've just realised we've been saying " there's always next year" for 35 years! and it's true too because no 2 years of growing your own are never the same are they?

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    1. That is so true for us, I wonder even in a country with drought, whether they have 2 or more years the same!

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  3. Well, haven`t you been lucky with your tomatoes! I had loads on the vines outside, but all had to be harvested still green, as lack of continued sunshine never gave them a chance to ripen. I`ve made huge amounts of chutney and raw pickled relish. Just a handful of the green tomatoes now finally decided to ripen. There are still 4 small pumpkins to harvest outside, plus 1 medium sized butternut
    squash still on the vine. Best harvest for me this year were the amounts of tomatoes, albeit green, then the potatoes and courgettes. We used the last overgrown courgette as stuffed marrow as our Sunday meal. I`ve never before had luck with growing pumpkins or butternut squashes, so I`m chuffed about my meagre produce this year.

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    1. Well done on the pumpkins anyway. My neighbour gave us a small unripe butternut last night. We shall see how it goes. We didn't start eating red tomatoes until the end of July, so they were very late.

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  4. I put my green tomatoes in a shoe box with the lid on to ripen; the skins dont get as tough. I never put tomatoes in the fridge; I think it ruins their flavour. I grew cape gooseberries for the first time this year; what a wonderful fruit they are....

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    1. The ones in the fridge were ripe so I was trying to slow them down, the tasted lovely. Cape gooseberries are rather nice aren't they although we had trouble ripening those as well as the summer that year was as bad as this one has been.

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