Tomatoes: growing and eating

 

It snapped under the weight of its own fruit, Sep 2022

It's been a good year for tomatoes in 2022.  Last year the bulk of my plants were at the allotment and they got blight before any fruit ripened.  Before many fruits had even formed, really.  This year I have them growing both there and back at home, and no blight to be seen in either place. 

I think my stakes were too short, Sep 2022

Most of the plants are a salad variety I've been saving seed from for many years now;  I can't remember the original variety name.  They have been pretty reliable about growing good amounts of fruit, and good size;  though I don't get red fruit every year (this is not an issue, as I have such a good green salsa recipe that one year I was disappointed when all my tomatoes ripened).

I have about four cherry tomato plants growing in planters at the allotment, which have certainly been producing consistently all summer:  enough to pick a few bowlsful every week.  Also at the allotment, I put down about a dozen or more of the salad variety, but these haven't really performed well.  The planters were filled with pure compost, but the plants in the ground have been languishing among too much grass I think.  Not a lot of fruits, and those all have been small-ish.

At home I have a total of six of the salad variety plants, well spaced and sans pasture grass.  I pinched out the growing tips once they reached the tops of their 1.25 m supports, but this did not stop them as seen in the photo above (although the stem is nearly split in two, it's still ripening the fruit that caused it to snap, so heavy they're almost touching the ground).  

Most of these salad tomatoes have been peeled, sliced, and dehydrated for winter use, but some have actually gone into salads.  They have also been very nice grilled on the barbecue:  olive oil, salt and black pepper;  and the same treatment for roasting in the air fryer which hardly takes any time at all.