Something New With Tomatoes

Read on to find out what I've down to these tomatoes

 

It's been a great year for tomatoes and we have all shapes and colours pouring out of the polytunnel. Sue usually cooks them up, removes the skins and then freezes them. We use them through the year in the same way as tinned tomatoes.
But when another basketful came into the kitchen, we had a problem. Freezers full, plenty enough tomatoes for the coming year.
So I decided to try something different. We recently purchased a steam juicer. It's basically just a steamer with a tube. The steam breaks down the cells in the fruit and pure juice trickles down the tube ready for collection.
And so I loaded up the tomatoes and turned on the gas. It wasn't too long before I'd collected half a pan of translucent tomato juice. I kept steaming until the tomatoes looked pretty sorry for themselves and I had a whole pan of juice.



With my mind on freezer space, I left Sue to watch the pan as we reduced it further and further until it fitted into an ice cube tray.









I wasn't sure what it would taste like, but a dip of the finger and a lick of the tongue was enough to know that we had created something with a vibrant zing to it. A bucketful of tangy tomatoiness in a tiny package. It packed a real punch and will really add a new dimension to our cooking.


As for those rather sorry looking tomatoes, they still had too much flesh inside to ignore.
I wasn't sure whether or not all the flavour would have been already extracted, but decided to push everything through a sieve and see what I got. Again, I reduced it down, though not so drastically. Again it was really tomatoey and will make a great sauce for pasta or to go on a pizza. Alternatively, I can just use a cube instead of tomato paste when I need.

And sow we begin again

The dining room table is no longer available for dining.
For the near end is where I am chitting my potatoes and the far end has just been set up as my sowing station.
I normally resist the urge to sow seeds for a couple more weeks at least. In the house they just go leggy and tend to succumb to damping off. I can give them the heat they require, though for most this is only necessary for germination itself. But I can't provide anywhere light enough and airy enough.

I'd love to move them into the polytunnel, but daytime temperatures in there at the moment range from 50 to 70, and that's in a very mild late winter. 50 should be OK for leeks, but I'm not sure about tiny tomato plants, chillies or aubergines.

Pepper seeds. Four varieties in one half tray.
I'll transplant them quickly so they don't get crowded.

Leek Jealousy
Now, every year at the Fenland Smallholders produce show, someone turns up with impossibly perfect leeks, whilst mine are still far from fully grown. Fortunately last year I managed to beat them off with my red cabbage, which took the rosette in 'best vegetable grown above ground' category.
But I resolved that I too would have leeks in September. I scoured the seed catalogues and purchased a packet of leek seeds of the variety Jolant, an early variety. I sowed the seeds last week and they are already coming through.



Babies thrown out
And with the knowledge that I now have a hotbed in the polytunnel which is already beginning to warm up, I've also started off my tomatoes, aubergines, chillies and peppers too. In fact, the smaller seeds of the cherry varieties have germinated already. I'm going to be bold and put them straight out into the mini greenhouses over the hotbed and see what happens. If the experiment fails, there's still plenty enough time to start again.

Cherry Tomato "Honeybee"

Meanwhile, in the outside beds..
Of course, with the passing of winter and the advent of spring, the veg beds need getting ready. There's a constant ebb and flow between the ground drying out and another rainy day making it too wet to work. But the balance is moving towards being workable and if I don't start now, it won't be long before I have queues of young plants waiting to go into beds which are not ready.
Here's the first bed to get the treatment. Doesn't it look neat!

Meanwhile, the garlic cloves which I planted about a month ago have been making the very most of their head start.

88 degrees in early March!
ed. The newly germinated leeks and a few tomatoes which have just started to come through have been thrown into the cauldron today. They are in a mini greenhouse, over the hotbed, in the polytunnel. This morning, under perfectly blue skies, I recorded a temperature of 88 degrees in there! I really need to get myself a max/min thermometer though to see what's happening at night.





Polytunnel Prolifica

Tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers and beans.
The polytunnel really adds an extra dimension to our food production.

I've got aubergines this year.
The Listada de Gandia are fruiting
much better than the more usual
Black Beauty.



Tigerella and Black Cherry.

Things have moved on quickly in the polytunnel in the last few weeks.
We can now rely on a handful of ripe, tangy tomatoes everyday, red ones, yellow ones, green ones, black(ish) ones, stripy ones, big ones, small ones, round ones, pear-shaped ones. Or, to put it another way... Moneymaker, Sunbaby, Green Zebra, Black Cherry, Black Russian, Tigerella, Marmande, Red Cherry, Gardeners Delight, Ildi, Roma. It's a tad more inspirational than the tomato section of the supermarket!

There's always a slightly longer wait than we'd like for tomatoes and there's a slow build up. The real flood will be another month or so yet, but Sue has already started cooking up sauces and passatas to go in the freezer.








The cucumbers are coming gradually, but are a bit disappointing given the number of plants that I have. Having said that, we're still getting a couple a week, which is plenty. Just not enough to be giving them away or selling them.

Onto more exotic produce and, now that I've stopped the overhead irrigation, the peppers are faring much better. This is very exciting as it's a crop I've never succeeded with before.


Peppers and chillies, mid-August

 

Then there's the chillies, in their numerous forms and levels of heat. These have all done very well this year, but have left Sue and I with a bit of a puzzle.


Peppers and Chillies, early September

Several years ago, we joined a truck tour of East Africa for the summer holidays. Every day we would call in at a local market to stock up on supplies. I well remember rather brashly volunteering to test a rather small, green chilli for heat. I hesitantly nibbled the end, expecting my head to go volcanic, my lips to swell, my brow to sweat and my tongue to go numb. But not a bit of it. These chillies just tasted like watery peppers. We purchased a small bag full and they were duly added to that evening's concoction... which blew everyone's head off! For those inoffensive chillies had suddenly changed their nature and were fiery as hell.

The point of this little tale is that the same has happened again. We nibbled a little of each and every chilli variety in the polytunnel and, without exception, they all just tasty like rather mild peppers. But the minute Sue chopped one up they completely changed, like Jekyll and Hyde. This was made worse by the fact that Sue carelessly rubbed her eye and got chilli in it.








The Borlottis have all been picked now.

I've picked most of the beans now and saved the seeds either for sowing next year or for winter cassoulets. The chickpea crop has been abandoned after our harvest of one chickpea!

But this has left more space for the Butternut Squash plants to ramble. Other squashes, pumpkins and courgettes have performed disappointingly in the polytunnel. I think they are much happier outside. But getting butternuts to ripen is never easy and they seem happier with the tropical conditions in the tunnel.
It looks as if we'll get at least half a dozen fine specimens and the first is well on its way to being ripe.
I've got my eyes on the Fenland Smallholders produce show for a couple of these.

Butternut Squash coming along nicely.



Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade

The green tomatoes took a lot of slicing.
Must sort out where we put the slicer on the food processor.

Monday 22nd October 2012
I'm begining to forget which way I should
point the camera to capture the sunrise.

The tomatoes I had to pick about a week ago are clearly not going to ripen any further.
In fact, one by one they have gradually been turning brown with blight.

So today we picked out the very best and turned them into this...



Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade

Now, I'm not a great fan of green tomatoes, but this marmalade is absolutely lovely. It's tremendously zingy and the flavour really packs a punch.
From now on, I'll look forward to the end of the tomato harvest just for this!

First Frost

Sunday 14th October 2012
The First Frost

"Come on! It's freezing.
Budge over, there's room for all of us in here."

What a day we had today! I had my first slightly crunchy stroll down to the chickens this morning, my wellies leaving a line of melted footprints in the lightly frosted grass. Elvis's chicks weren't particularly impressed by this, so they went back to cuddling into mum. But it didn't take them long to get back into adventurous mode. These chicks are absolutely delightful, jumping all over my hands when I feed them and regularly wandering away from mum into unexplored areas. They really know no fear.

The chicks have discovered how to feed from the grown-ups' feeders.



Meanwhile, the guinea family
goes from strength to strength



Not forgetting this character



A new auction
After dropping the pigs off in the morning, we paid a visit to an auction which has just opened up just down the road. Yesterday I spent more than I wanted on an axe, so what should I find sitting in a cardboard box about to be sold for next-to-nothing? Yes, three lovely old axes, wooden handles and full of character. Just typical! We did, however, buy a little veg stall for gate sales. Very cheap and saves me a job.

Back to that axe.

Hatch, Catch and DispatchSqueamish readers may want to fast forward now. For I have to admit we have been struggling with dispatching the chickens. Breaking their necks is not as easy as it sounds, particularly with the cockerels. It requires a knack which we clearly don't have. Then there's the fact that it's very difficult to tell when the deed is done. We always knew that they continued to flap and run around, but are they really supposed to keep blinking their eyes??

So we decided that beheading would be more efficient, better for the chooks and for us. Hence the axe. So today our French Copper Marans cockerel put its head on the chopping block, quite literally. It was quick and efficient and we were both happy with the way it went. This is the way forward for us.
We were also relieved to see that yes, even with the head severed, the chicken still kept blinking. And it was weird, even though we expected it, to literally see a headless chicken running around.

35 lbs of Green Tomatoes
It was still relatively early in the day, so I decided to tackle the tomatoes. We've managed to eat about half a dozen juicy, ripe tomatoes this year, from a total of about a hundred seedlings! That's not good. It all started with disastrous germination, then poor growing weather. Then we couldn't get the polytunnel up in time, so all the tomatoes went into the open ground.

The good news is that, had we not had the delays, I reckon we would still have got quite a lot of tomatoes as many of the plants were covered in flowers and small, green fruits.

The bad news is that halfway through October the fruits are just not going to develop any more. Add to that the fact that blight has now begun to bite them as I was loathe to remove the leaves while the fruits still needed every ounce of energy to develop.

So today I decided to pull the lot up, disposing of any fruits from plants with withering leaves and keeping only the most perfect of fruits, green as they all were.

I still ended up with 35lbs of green tomatoes. Sue has already started processing them with a large maslin pan full of ginger and green tomato jam.

Seven Bramblings and a Tree Sparrow

It wasn't too late in the day for a birding highlight either.

When I came in for a late afternoon break a sparrow coming down to the pond to drink caught my eye. It was a tree sparrow, the first of the winter. These delightful birds were regular at the feeders during our first winter here but have been scarce since. Let's hope this is the forerunner of more.

But then, in the branch just above the sparrow, a superb male Brambling sat bold as brass. And above him two females. Quite possibly one of these was the bird we heard drop in with chaffinches yesterday.

The local goldfinch flock were coming down to the pond too, absolutely delightful to watch, and I wondered whether the bramblings might have joined the finch flock which spend most of the day commuting between the safety of the ash trees and the recently harrowed neighbouring field.

So I crossed the dyke and aimed my telescope at the feeding finch flock. As the field has been worked perfectly flat I had stunning views of every goldfinch and chaffinch, along with SEVEN bramblings, including two handsome males.

I would be very pleased to see this many brambling feeding with finches on any day out birdwatching in Britain, but on my own doorstep was outstanding. Only problem is that these birds are most definitely a harbinger of winter, as were the forty or so Redwings which flew across the garden earlier in the day.

Tomorrow I tackle the pumpkin patch.

Salad Days

Tuesday 28th August 2012

 

If I had any sense of pride I'd not be making this post. I'd be quietly not writing about salad crops this year.

 

As it is, I have had to wait till almost September to actually harvest a cucumber (though a very fine specimen it is) and my first two tomatoes, and there's not exactly a glut on the way. Like all failed gardeners, I do indeed intend to blame the weather.

 



The first cucumber of the year.

...and the first tomatoes, outside.

 

So here goes...my excuses!

Earlier in the year I had a very frustrating time with my tomato seedlings in particular, losing them to damping off. That put me at least a month back.

This was followed by months of dull, cool days so growth was sluggish (must try not to use that word, too many bad memories!) in the extreme. My little greenhouse became crammed with plants waiting to go outside, or into the polytunnel which sat in its packaging in the stables.

 

But I suspect there may be another reason for the staggering lack of progress made by my tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, peppers and chillis.

For my little polycarbonate greenhouse was dismantled and brought with us from London. Now, when I originally put it together I remember a thin plastic film on the polycarbonate sheets declaring THIS SIDE OUT. Apart from that film, now peeled off, I can see no discernible way of figuring out which way round the sheets go, so it may well be that half the panes are actually deflecting the light and the heat!

 

Not to worry though. Gardening is a slow process of learning and improvement year on year, every year with its own unique and unpredictable challenges. Next year there'll be a polytunnel bursting to the brim with salad crops as well as all manner of other experiments going on.

And there's a new greenhouse waiting to go up too.

As for my little old greenhouse, it will find a use. Maybe a potting shed.

Things to do on a wet day

Thursday 19th July 2012

 Paperwork

Ironing 

 Cleaning

Catch up with the blog

Get wet

Plan for dry days

Cook, bake, preserve

Buy things on the internet

Write lists of things to do on wet days

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomato.
I have abandoned all hope of getting the polytunnel up in the near future.
This is a problem. For the greenhouse, until a couple of days ago, was full of tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers and chillis. And all waiting to go into the polytunnel which is in 28 boxes in the stables!

I just love the idea of loads of colours, shapes and flavours of tomato and pepper, crops which we use day in day out and would use more of if we had them. Tomatoes, especially, are easy to store through the winter, made into sauces or passata.
After a shaky start with damping off and a second sowing, a few seeds of each variety has eventually yielded an awful lot of plants. But stuck in seed trays and not getting anywhere near enough light or heat in the greenhouse, all my indoor crops have been languishing.

Tomatoes and asparagus make
good companions

I reached this same stage last year, when I eventually planted most of the toms outside and crossed my fingers! It worked well and we had a good crop, even if we had to ripen quite a lot hung upside down indoors. Blight will be more of a threat this year, but nevertheless my straggly plants have again been put outside to cope. Already, after just a couple of days, they seem a little stronger, their roots free to spread and their leaves exposed to full light and a healthy breeze.

Tomatoes and gooseberries

like each other too.

I read that tomatoes do well planted with asparagus, in particular that the toms deter asparagus beetle. Somewhere else I read that tomatoes and gooseberries are good companions.

So that's where many of them have gone.

Hopefully when summer comes I'll be posting images of baskets full of ripe, multicoloured tomatoes.

Space in the greenhouse
I started this post with a list of things to do in the rain. I left out pottering in the polytunnel, but in its absence the greenhouse became a rather smaller alternative today. A mixture of peat-free growbags, pots and straw bales now house my crops which will hopefully start to grow now that they have space and light.

And with things a lot less cluttered I'll be able to track down the slugs which have totally decimated every single basil seedling as soon as it has germinated.

A compact space for my greenhouse crops.
But do they have time to set fruit and ripen
after a very slow start?

p.s. A Ray of Hope
When I vowed never again to moan about the rain, along came four months of rain. As I finish writing this post in which I abandon all hope of getting the polytunnel up, what should appear on the horizon but a five day forecast for high pressure, light winds and warm temperatures! When I was a child, whenever I asked "are we nearly there?" the destination was "always just around the next corner." I've learned to wait until I see before I believe.