The sun shone today and some of the tomatoes which were ripe enough to pick – especially Belriccio which seems to capture rays in its creases - brought summer warmth indoors to the kitchen.
Two new varieties joined the ripe ranks this week. Apero – a small red plum/cherry and Elegance – a standard red and one of the Sutton’s grafted. I picked twice and each time the tomatoes weighed in at 1.2kg, making a total for the week of 2.4kg. There was also about 500g of ‘split on the vine’ fruit, about which I have created my own weighing room rules !
Split on the vine – can’t be included in the week’s count. Splits once in the kitchen – can !
Yellow Balconi are the variety I have most plants of and so are producing the greatest number of fruit. They are also the only place in this garden that I find the odd slug or snail. I can tell from a couple of ruined fruit that the occassional nibble is had, but mostly I just catch them napping on the compost surface, under the thick leaf canopy. I’m sure they must quickly come to, as they get flung over the fence (not into the neighbours I hasten to add !) but I hope they’re thankful I don’t have the stomach for cutting them in half with scissors as I know some incensed gardners are driven to do.
So lots of tomatoes still on the vines and looking in the greenest of health and if I’m reading the weather forecast correctly, the weight of future weeks’ harvests is going to be influenced by what happens in the upper atmosphere, courtesy of the jet stream.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Your harvest is progressing nicely, and I’m glad the blight hasn’t reared its ugly head in your garden yet. 2.4kg is over 5 lb.
Here, Gardener’s Delight continues to be the most productive, and the Black Cherries are now ripening. I picked six semi-ripe fruits today, and finish ripening them indoors, away from any nasties.
I picked my first ‘Lettuce Leaf’ last week. They are larger than a cherry tomato but not a ‘standard’. To eat, it was very tangy and had a lovely smoky flavour, but unfortunately all the flavour is in the juice and the flesh is quite bland. They’re billed as cooking tomatoes.
Sadly more of my ‘Gold Medal’ fruits have B.E.R., but both of the ones I’ve picked are ripening up, so all is not lost. Hopefully yours will do the same. But there’s no sign of the pretty yellow swirls I was promised; the seem to be a uniform red. Perhaps the others will be different. I can’t wait to taste them.
Here Black Cherry has lots fruit on it but after the first truss or so has slowed down on the ripening front. However flavour wise- it will be worth the wait. I’m glad I ended up growing it again this year.
I too decided that slightly under ripe might be a better time to pick – so I brought some Tigerella’s inside to do just that.
It does seem odd that a variety with gold in its name should turn out uniform red – but then I’m still thrown by a tomato being called ‘Lettuce Leaf’. It’s clearly not a case of it all being in the name !