With over 6 kilos of tomatoes that have come off the plot in the last fortnight I have been investigating new ways of dealing with them.
As the majority of them are the 'Garden Pearl' variety that I have found a little watery and flavourless I was particularly keen to try out recipes that enhance the flavour.
A great one was to create 'sun-dried' tomatoes. Given there isn't an Italian level of sun around I used the oven instead.
Slice tomatoes into thirds (depending on size), scatter a little salt over them and place into an oven preheated to around 100 degrees C. Keep an eye on them if your oven, like mine, has hotter patches than others. It's wise to use a silicone baking sheet to save on washing up as the juices caramelise and make it a pain to clean. When they look dried (but not burnt) then pop them in a jar and cover with oil. Scatter them in salads or in pasta and enjoy the taste of summer tomatoes well into the Autumn.
The tomatoes when ready for potting up.
I also slow cooked some cherry tomatoes, garlic, red onions and red peppers and blended it together for a healthy chilled soup.
When I get more flavoursome tomatoes off the plot then I might create great vats of pasta sauce but it's not worth it when the tomatoes aren't already bursting with flavour.
Top tip:
It's not just important to mark plants when planting out but also clearly label seeds and seedlings to avoid confusion later on. Pinch out outdoor grown cordon tomatoes after they have set fruit on 5 trusses. Remove lower leaves if they look a little crowded.
One important thing when growing any seedlings is to mark the varieties well. Something I failed to do earlier this year when I grew two varieties of tomato - 'Garden Pearl' and 'Alicante' (or 'Moneymaker' - it's a mystery plant). Both sets of seedlings did well and once the risks of frost were over I proudly planted them out. I couldn't label them as I couldn't remember what varieties they were and which was which but they looked happy and I gave them a good feed of tomato fertilizer to set them off on their way. So far so good.
Unfortunately it turns out 'Garden Pearl' is a trailing bush variety. There are two types of tomato - bush and cordon (also sometimes known as indeterminate). The bush one grows as a bush and you don't need to pinch out sideshoots and the cordon one grows as, you guessed it, a cordon so in one main stem and you remove side stems and stems that form in the leaf joint so that the fruit produced by the main stem can get all the goodness. As you can see, once the seedlings really got going the difference in plant types is pretty obvious.
This particular bush variety is also a trailing variety and very suited to hanging baskets and pots but not so great at ground level. Bernard suggested I lift the tomatoes on straw to improve air circulation and protect the fruit from the earth - this is supposed to ward off a bad disease called blight where the leaves turn black and the plants collapse.
I also have a couple of other plant varieties - marmande (a large beefsteak tomato) and baby plum tomatoes and another mystery one picked up at a local plant fair.
I have just read that it is a good idea to remove lower leaves to allow air to circulate and let the sun in and the fruit to ripen. Also we should pinch out the growing tip when the fifth truss of flowers has set flowers. this allows the plant to concentrate it's efforts on growing the existing fruit without wasting energy on creating new fruit that will be still too small and unripe before the frosts come and stop harvesting. I tried to do this on my cordon plants but I fear they may have gone too far. I have roped them in as much as possible as they were flopping over the other plants. I did snap off some of the stems that had grown in the leaf joins and replanted them as tomatoes often can grow roots from cuttings. Again, I fear this may be too late in the season but will keep an eye out.
While I did have a tomato ripening on the 12th July that was from a plant that had been raised in a greenhouse I suspect so further on in the growing cycle. The 'Garden Pearl' cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen up now and I suspect we are in for a bit of a glut - over 500g collected today but I worry they are a little pink and watery and I might have to be better at feeding them next year.
