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Here is my tomatoes bounty, snatched from the blackened tendrils of blight! My bowl doesn’t quite floweth over…but at least reaches the brim. I had feared just a lonesome survivor rolling around in the base, looking for a sandwich bijou enough to fill.
And there are a few more ripening I hope to pick by Thursday (come on sun – shine, shine, shine – it’s time to sling your hero’s hat on).
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Yay – that’s a wonderfully encouraging photograph for the blight-hit grower to see; I’m so glad all wasn’t lost for you. I might just reach through the internet and nick one…
Well there’s some good news here, after I harvested 24 lbs of potatoes (according to my bathroom scales – 1 1/2 stones), I noted a singular Sunstream fruit has become… orange! Who knew?
You know, mine may not be coming in thick and fast, but they are so intense, you only need a few. Just half a dozen small ones make gorgeous pasta sauce!
I agree – it is encouraging isn’t it. I sort of had this notion that it would be blight here today – all gone tomorrow. And whilst it’s certainly not ideal – it’s not the overnight shutdown that I had somehow envisaged in my head.
That’s a lovely lot of spuds! It’s amazing what can come out of the ground. I am always a bit phased by all the potato lingo – like the earlies/lates/chittings and then haulms and all the earthing up process. But I bet it’s all worth it when you get to sit down, knife and fork to the ready, with a homegrown potato and some lovely melting butter puddling down onto the plate! Yum!
Yes – and this is so much more pasta sauce than salad weather!
I am about to have a baked potato! Not very summery at all but it suddenly seems to have got dark, not quite chilly but not that warm either – and so nice baked potato doesn’t seem so seaonally inappropriate!
It isn’t warm. You know the thing that scares me off potatoes again? Spreading blight. I’d rather have tomatoes, and don’t dare grow both so close together. Is that silly?
Scyrene, no – it’s not silly at all, spreading blight between crops is a genuine concern. It’s *your* decision that’s important in your garden. If you don’t want to risk it, don’t.
I had the same view on potatoes v tomatoes – but now I am wondering – in a chicken and egg kind of way – what the sequence of events is. Given that blight comes with certain climatic conditions – then if a garden is the “chosen one” as mine was! – then does it make a difference if you have potatoes or not….i.e somehow I’d had in my head that potatoes were the “lure” kind of thing – and then the poor old tomatoes got whacked by their proximity – but if the potatoes are no greater an attractor than the tomatoes …. then does it make a difference ? I have a feeling that although I don’t know the answer this might be more solvable than the chicken/egg one!
Anyway I think it’s more likely to be death by drowing in the garden tonight !
Loads of tomato recipes here http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipes/tag-815/tomato-recipes.aspx?search
Sally, when I grew tomatoes without potatoes, the blight still struck, and a couple of times ruined the crop, before I got wise to its ways. So I don’t think one crop attracts it more than the other, just that once it’s taken hold on (say) potatoes it’s more likely to spread to tomatoes or another potato crop because of the proximity. I’ve read that some potato varieties have very good blight resistance, whereas all tomatoes seem to get infected eventually. I could be wrong of course, but that’s how I understand these matters.
I hope nothing drowned in your garden, except the slugs and snails, of course.