Wednesday was overcast all day but it remained mild.
We'll soon have to decide when to remove our plot greenhouse tomatoes into boxes to see if they will ripen at home. Sue removed more leaves on our last visit on Tuesday and it showed just how many tomatoes we've still to ripen. The alternative - lots of green tomato chutney.
Over the last couple of weeks lots of our tomatoes have ripened so perhaps we'll leave them for another week or so but if colder weather is forecast they might be better off ripening at home.
Below is an updated chart of our tomato harvest from our plot and home greenhouses. We've picked around 7kg in the last couple of weeks.
I watched the tomato tasting test on this week’s Beechgrove Garden confirming that tomatoes shouldn't be kept in the fridge if you want them to keep their flavour. An extract from Beechgrove Garden’s latest fact sheet describing part of the taste test is below:
Finally they conducted a tomato taste test. They had 3 samples each of the tomato ‘Shirley’ to try to see if our panel had a preference: 1 sample was freshly picked that morning, 1 sample had been harvested a week and stored in the fridge and the third sample had been harvested a week ago and stored at room temperature.
The overall advice was that tomatoes should be left on the vine for as long as possible before harvested and that they should not be stored in the fridge as it affects the taste.
The fact sheet sheet can be found here describing the taste test fully and it contains other interesting items shown on the programme.
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I need to get down to the allotment and see what tomatoes can be salvaged I think. Some of the plants have fallen over, so they are nice and handy for slugs and other creeping crawling things. You've done so very well with yours, and I'm thinking you may still get quite a few more before the end of the season, especially as you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse!
ReplyDeleteI never make my tomato supports strong enough especially when all the tomatoes are at the top of the plants well above where the canes end. I had to add some extra support this week as some plants had fallen over and were blocking the path. I just never learn!
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