Tomatoes for 2023 and other things

I’ve been sorting through my tomato seeds and trying to work out what to grow in 2023. As ever, its a balancing act, trying to select a range of cultivars that meet the conflicting needs of an amateur grower with not a lot of space. I have seeds for around 200 different cultivars and (as…… Continue reading Tomatoes for 2023 and other things

2023 Gardening Decisions

At this time of year when everything in the garden is quiet, thoughts turn to deciding what to grow next year. I’ve increased the space in the tunnel dedicated to strawberries which means there won’t be as much space for beans but it will be easier to separate them. There will still be space for…… Continue reading 2023 Gardening Decisions

Tomatoes starting to finish – 2022

Ok, so the tomatoes are still producing a reasonable quantity (2.5 kg today) but it’s obvious that it won’t be going on for much longer. Unusually it’s the beefsteak that are turning off first. Today we picked the last of the Aunt Rubies German Green and Black Krim. It’s a few weeks sooner than other…… Continue reading Tomatoes starting to finish – 2022

Tasty & Healthy Simple Vegetarian Lentil Loaf Recipe

This lentil loaf is something that we have reasonably frequently but only now have I decided to add it to the recipes on this website. The reason for doing this is that it today we made it using sieved juice from home grown tomatoes, rather than bought tomato juice. It seems to have worked well.…… Continue reading Tasty & Healthy Simple Vegetarian Lentil Loaf Recipe

Tomatoes Ripening Early (2022)

The hot spell we had a few weeks ago seems to have brought everything earlier than other years. This is possibly good or bad. We are about 6kg of tomatoes ahead of what we would have expected to pick by this time in an average year and it seems to be mainly down to the…… Continue reading Tomatoes Ripening Early (2022)

Today’s Harvest (August 2022)

The family have been here for the past week so it’s been difficult to know exactly how things are going. We had a heavy thunderstorm which broke the hot dry weather and, hopefully, will mean that some of the beans and courgettes will set and grow. It doesn’t affect the tomatoes because I have been…… Continue reading Today’s Harvest (August 2022)

First Tomato Harvest 2022

Today I decided that the tomatoes were starting to get ripe enough to warrant picking a few. As usual the cherry tomatoes are the first with Oleron Yellow, Red Berry, Garnet, Koralik Red Cherry & Indigo Cherry Drops making up the majority of fruit by number. However, the weight was mainly from standard red tomatoes…… Continue reading First Tomato Harvest 2022

Effects of Dry Weather

The weather this week has been hot, dry and windy. As a result, whilst the plants in the greenhouses are doing well and the tomatoes are starting to ripen in quantity, all the outside plants are suffering and need copious amounts of water. Even so, the runner beans have lost all their flowers and no…… Continue reading Effects of Dry Weather

Tomatoes – How many Trusses is the right number for Indeterminate Plants?

Amateur - August 2014

A truss of tomatoes is the bunch of fruit growing off the stem. Different cultivars have different sorts of trusses, some are long with up to 40 tomatoes on a truss, others are much shorter with only a few (sometimes as few as five or six) tomatoes. We grow tomatoes to get as many ripe…… Continue reading Tomatoes – How many Trusses is the right number for Indeterminate Plants?