Tuesday 29 September 2020

It's All About Tomatoes

It's almost  the end of the tomatoes in the greenhouse. I've had plenty to eat all the way since the very first one in June and  have now taken  off lots of leaves and dead bits to let the light in to the few remaining that are still green.

 The seed catalogues for 2021 have started to arrive - 3 so far -  Kings, D.T Brown and Marshalls. I had a look in the seed tin to see what's left from this year. ........Very few Ildi Yellow plum, even less Big Mama and a new packet of Rio Grande which must have been in a collection on a magazine because they are not a variety I know.


Once upon a time - not so long ago all tomatoes were red, round and 8 to a pound. My Aunt and Uncle on a Land Settlement Association smallholding through the 50's and 60's had long greenhouses full - all one sort - round, red and 8 to the pound. Anything too big or too small were fed to the pigs.

Now it's easier to buy more than one variety in the supermarket and the choice for growing at home is huge..........................In the  D.T Brown catalogue alone  there are 49 different sorts to choose from. Indoor only, Indoor/outdoor or outdoor only; Giant Beefsteak, very large, large,  small or very small;  round,  plum or grape; yellow, red, orange, striped, black and new this year a tomato that ripens to.....................GREEN....................why I wondered?
 

In Suffolk we have a HUGE greenhouse, the size of 11 football pitches built a few years ago and now producing vine tomatoes from March to October. Another similar has already being built in Norfolk.

and two more are in the planning stage....... I googled..................

Two giant greenhouses costing £120m are to be built next to sewage works to grow millions of tomatoes and bring 360 agricultural jobs.
Work on the greenhouses - the UK's largest - has already begun at Trowse, near Norwich, and Ingham, Suffolk.
Heat to create an ideal growing temperature will be pumped into the greenhouses from the sewage works.
New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) said they would provide an economic "shot in the arm".
Britain consumes 500,000 tonnes of tomatoes a year but only 20% are home-grown.


But back to my greenhouse - what 7 or 8 plants to grow next year?  Definitely Big Mama from the D.T Brown  Indoor only list,  they are delicious and have hardly any seeds or pulp and the skin comes off really easily when using them for chutney. I'll use the T & M Rio Grande packet and then maybe find something else completely different because looking for a new packet of Ildi - the yellow plum toms - in the Kings catalogue, I found, printed over the top of the Ildi photo CROP FAILURE!  

 So that's the reason none of mine germinated........... the seeds which I bought last year all failed and so did  those grown for seed for 2021. Well......... that answers that conundrum which I've been puzzling over all summer..........I must have re-sown with something different when the Ildi didn't appear and forgot to re-write the label! No point keeping the few seeds left from this year then!
 
 I shall peruse my catalogues and choose. Hopefully once again I will be 100% home grown from June to October.
 
Back Tomorrow
Sue





24 comments:

  1. How strange - I bought Ildi seeds a couple of days before we went into lockdown - there were only a couple of varieties left at the garden centre and I chose the Ildi as I remembered you had them last year. All bar 2 germinated and I ended up passing on several plants to my mum - both my plants and hers have been terrific croppers- the best variety I've ever planted! I've been singing your praises as a result :)

    I di have other seeds which failed to germinate/ germinated and then failed to thrive and I put some of those down to the rubbish compost - I've seen lots of people.complain about the quality of compost this year

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    1. Lucky getting the Ildi,I loved them last year, maybe your seeds were from the year before tomatoes.
      If you save some seeds for next year you might be the only person growing them and could make a fortune!
      As for compost, it's getting worse each year since they stopped using peat so much.

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    2. You can tell I am not a gardener, I keep seeing Ildi and reading lidl or Aldi!!

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  2. We grew Green Zebra I think they're called this year. Only had a couple before Blight struck but they were tasty and looked different, I'll give them that! We had the red Tigerella too but they came to nowt. Tam had some Galina - outdoor small yellow cherry type ones which grew like weeds in Yorkshire but did nothing here in wet Wales. I think they were from Siberia too but obviously like it dryer. We also grew Grushovka, a pink tomato, which survived the Blight and we would grow again. We were given a dozen plants by the Estonian lass who milks next door too, but don't know what varieties (Lidl packets I assume). Tam gets her seeds from the Real Seed Company, if you want to try something different. https://www.realseeds.co.uk/

    We save seeds from the ones we grew, which is what they encourage you to do.

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    1. I tried Real Seed Company - love their ethos but with our dry weather compared to where they are, I had lots of fails.

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  3. It's nice to have an explanation, isn't it? At least now you know and I agree - chuck those extra seeds out now, before they get sown!

    I'm definitely going for sungold again and gardeners' delight. I want to look for the tiger stripe tomatoes that I won in a raffle (the seeds, I mean). Apart from that, I want a variety of colours/types. Definitely some yellow one for sure and I need to do a bit of homework. The accidental beef tomatoes were lovely but you get very few per plant really.
    Isn't it lovely that, in this world of doom and gloom, we can plan for next year's sowing. :-)
    xx

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    1. The best thing about gardening is "there is always next year"!

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  4. I took seeds from a tasteless supermarket tomato and grew them, just to see if they were just tasteless, or as I thought picked before they were ripe. The tomatoes and I am still picking them in the greenhouse when ripe taste wonderful, the plant a cordon, grew tall and thin, not too many leaves on. Success I think.

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    1. Well done on your successful tomato growing.

      I don't buy many tomatoes through the rest of the year and never ordinary - always so watery and tasteless. Mini plums are what I look for in winter - they seem to be OK.

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  5. Have you tried Maskotka? It's a cherry bush variety and the tastiest tomato I've ever grown, I recommend it to everyone. The plants give a good yield and the tomatoes, though a cherry variety, vary in size, some grow a little larger than you'd usually expect from a cherry tomato.

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    1. That's a new name for me - I shall investigate.

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  6. Next year looks as though it could be my first year with absolutely no outdoor growing space since 2002, so I doubt I'll be growing any at all. But luckily I will be living right next to a weekly outdoor market and I should be able to watch out for the homegrown tomatoes that they sell. In the meantime I'll stick with the tinned variety through the Winter as soon as UK grown ones disappear from the shops.

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    1. I just can't imagine growing nothing - don't think my life would be worth living!

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    2. I have houseplants ... and my little tin bath, and there's a wall hung rack thing on my new place, so maybe I can plant up a few things, herbs, spring onions, radish, perhaps a spinach or two, nothing as big as tomato plants though. This will have to suffice for the next year.

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  7. I'm about to have a huge glut of green tomatoes; any tips about how to get them to turn red?

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    1. Put them on a tray in a cool room with a couple of ripe tomatoes amongst them and they should turn red. They won't be as good as sun ripened.

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  8. As least you know it was not your fault Sue

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    1. In a strange way I was so pleased to see the Crop Failure words to know it wasn't me

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  9. Have only grown Sungold since Geoff Hamilton recommended them in Radio Times - kept the page: issue 24th Feb to 1st March 1996.

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  10. You have so many different varieties of tomatoes. Here in Canada there are maybe only 10 that make it through our weather on the Prairies.

    God bless.

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    1. Most will grow in a greenhouse from June to October here but outside things are less reliable

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  11. Good to see about greenhouses in East Anglia, will make a change from everything being from Morroco when I pop in to our local tesco. Just a thought, do we really need 49 varieties? An indication of how this world has changed.

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  12. Kings seeds do a variety called Golden Crown. This year we've had huge trusses and lovely taste when they're properly ripe

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