We have tomatoes

June 25, 2015 by Elaine 6 Comments

I spotted the first tiny tomatoes the size of a petit pois

Living in the North of England, I am always pleasantly surprised when certain crops which I half think shouldn’t be able to even grow, let alone fruit in our neck of the woods, do just that and deliver oodles and oodles of produce. Tomatoes are one of these, especially varieties which are badged as being able to be grown outside of the safety of the greenhouse. I think of tomatoes as needing hours and hours of gloriously hot, sunny weather and that’s just the ones in the greenhouses. Yet year on year I find that not only am I able to grow tomatoes successfully in the greenhouse but that plants situated outside in tubs or the beds, also do remarkably well and keep us well stocked with tasty red fruits for months.

Of course things aren’t always plain sailing and outside plants have been lost to blight in previous years but on the whole, tomatoes seem to like the North …. well our part of it at least.

Five days later and they have more than doubled in size.

Whilst I was feeding the squash plants the other day, I glanced into one of the hanging baskets and realised that I could see the first tiny green examples of the Garden Pearl tomatoes and a closer examination of other baskets revealed the first tiny Maskotka tomatoes as well. My plans adapted so that once I had finished using the general purpose plant food on the squash and pumpkins, I swapped to the tomato food and gave each of the baskets with a set truss on the plant, a good feed.

Now the younger Mudlets, both of whom are rather partial to tomatoes straight from the plant, are waiting for the first tomatoes to ripen, so that the fun job of picking and eating can begin.