Wednesday morning started cold, the coldest morning of autumn so far with the temperature falling to 4.4°C and as it was a dull murky start to the day the temperature didn’t exactly shoot upwards. By lunchtime it started to rain and it continued most of the afternoon and into the early evening. It was fairly light rain, nothing too heavy.
As the temperature had fallen so low I decided to harvest our quinces Meeches Prolific which were ripening down on the plot. It was more for its looks - lovely when it flowers in spring - that was the main attraction for planting the tree. The fact it produced fruit was secondary when we decided to buy the tree. Now I know what we've been missing out on as quince and apple crumble has to be one of the season’s highlights as aromatic quinces and home grown apples are a great combination.
It was wet down the allotment but it didn't take too long to pick our 3kg of quinces. They easily parted company from the tree when tested in a similar manner to apples.
I thought I might as well clear the tomatoes from our plot greenhouse as it meant at least I would be out of the rain. Most of the tomatoes had ripened with each of our 5 varieties having around 2kg of green tomatoes. The full weights of our tomato crop are in the table below.
I don't know what to make of the results. We didn't get a single tomato from 3 plants of Sioux in our home greenhouse as every fruit produced succumbed to blossom end rot yet the three plants in the plot greenhouse produced our heaviest crop. On average each plant in the plot greenhouse produced 2.7kg of tomatoes. I don't know whether that’s good or bad but I’m satisfied with our final crop because as September started any crop at all was looking doubtful.
The box on the right contains all our green tomatoes so it’s now a matter of deciding where to keep them for a couple of weeks to see if they will ripen. I may have to do a little bit of reorganising in our freezers to accommodate the remainder.
Posts
A pretty good tomato harvest in the end I think, despite the blossom end rot. The quinces look great. I love the flavour - haven't had one in years, but there are some on a neighbouring allotment, and they look delicious.
ReplyDeleteThe fruit is so hard when you cut into one it's hard to believe it's edible let alone delicious.
Delete