Tomatoes
After tea I squelched down the garden, as you do in July, to check up on the tomatoes in the greenhouse. They are doing so much better than the attempt last year. There are shedloads of tomatoes growing now. (And yes, that is an actual unit of measurement.) I did a quick count of the ones that were actually visible and it comes to about 75. I didn't include the little teeny weeny ones that are just starting to grow which is probably a good quarter of a shedload. Well, I suppose this variety isn't called Sweet Million for nothing!
The good thing is that they are actually starting to ripen! There's only 3 ripening so far but that didn't happen at all last year so I'm very pleased. Apparently they need temperatures between 20-25°C to ripen, anything outside of that and the process just stops completely. So it's really annoying that since Friday, the temperature here has dropped drastically. Yesterday's high was 18°C, today's was only 16°C. Currently it's 15°C and feels like 13°C! It's supposed to go back up to 18°C for the rest of this week though so that shouldn't be too bad. I'm just hoping that they don't all ripen at once, otherwise we're going to be swamped with tomatoes.
Anyone got any good recipes for chutney or Italian style tomato sauce or something else that will freeze/keep??
Click for a larger image
Apologies for the blurry pics, I took them with my phone and it doesn't have auto-focus.
The good thing is that they are actually starting to ripen! There's only 3 ripening so far but that didn't happen at all last year so I'm very pleased. Apparently they need temperatures between 20-25°C to ripen, anything outside of that and the process just stops completely. So it's really annoying that since Friday, the temperature here has dropped drastically. Yesterday's high was 18°C, today's was only 16°C. Currently it's 15°C and feels like 13°C! It's supposed to go back up to 18°C for the rest of this week though so that shouldn't be too bad. I'm just hoping that they don't all ripen at once, otherwise we're going to be swamped with tomatoes.
Anyone got any good recipes for chutney or Italian style tomato sauce or something else that will freeze/keep??
Click for a larger image
Apologies for the blurry pics, I took them with my phone and it doesn't have auto-focus.