Saving the best to last

Top tip: Use vegetables as soon after picking as possible to keep nutrient levels up. If you can't eat them all immediately then blanch the vegetables to reduce harmful bacteria. Cooked tomatoes have higher levels of Lypocene which make them better at fighting heart disease and protect against cancer.

There is a saying that we are all either green and growing or we are ripe and rotten. This holds as true for fresh produce as it does for us.  Wine and cheese may get better with time and exposure to the air but this is rarely true for crops. Vegetables, like our skin, start to lose water and become flaccid as soon as they are picked. Why grow your own, only to neglect your crop once picked and eat vegetables that are no fresher than in the shops?

They also start to lose their vitamin content. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation  of the UN) state that vitamin C content decreases with time after harvest, and that little may remain after two or three days. When you do cook the vegetables, bear in mind that overcooking means a significant drop of vitamin content - try steaming instead of boiling (also eat potato skins as their vitamins are just under the skin) and use the water in a stock as the dissolved minerals stay in the water.

It can be hard to eat all the vegetables fresh so it helps to have a few ways of processing them. Our new freezer arrives in three days and I can resume blanching duties (the existing two freezers are already full). In the meantime, I have got a free extra fridge (from Freecycle) to store jams and chutneys in.  I am particularly fond of Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall's recipe for 'Glutney'.

This is a great way to use up summer vegetables and you can just use whatever is taking over your plot at the time. The quantities he recommends make 10 jars so i halved everything here. I also kept out the chillis as I am a wimp. I also rarely have all the spice to make the spice bag so I just use some allspice and nutmeg.

500g courgettes, diced into 1cm
500g red or green tomatoes (I don't bother to skin them though it was recommended), roughly chopped
500g cooking or eating apples, peeled and diced
250g onions, peeled and diced
250g sultanas or raisins
250g brown sugar
375ml white wine or cider vinegar, made up to 500ml with water
1 thumb sized nugget of ginger roughly chopped
1 tsp of mixed spice
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
1 tsp mustard powder and 1/2 tsp salt

Put all the ingredients in a pan. Heat the mixture gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar, bring to the boil. simmer uncovered for 2-3 hours (this makes the kitchen smell great). Stir to make sure it doesn't burn. it's ready when rich, thick and reduced. Put while warn in sterilised jars. Leave to mature for 2 weeks, ideally 2 months, before serving.

This recipe is also a speedy way of using up cherry tomatoes that is surprisingly healthy - in fact I adapted it from a Weightwatchers recipe. It takes just 10 minutes to prepare and 25 minutes to cook.

150g ready rolled puff pastry (I used a pack of feuillete pastry that I picked up in France on a day trip)
60g light mozzarella, sliced
60g goats cheese
500g cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp green pesto (I forgot to add it tonight but bet it would be yummy)

Score a line around the pastry 2.5cm from the edge to make a border then prick all over with a fork. Chill for a bit. Preheat the oven to 220C, bake the pastry for 10 minutes, remove from the oven and using the back of a fork push down the centre of the tart leaving the edges puffed up.

Reduce the oven temperature to 200C. Cover the base of the tart with the cheese slices and top with the tomato halves and bake for 15 minutes. Remove and drizzle with the pesto. Leave for 5 minutes and serve with a fresh salad and balsamic dressing.

Much ado about tomatoes

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.