My Tiny Plot

Archive for the tag 'Ripening'

My Tomatoes are beginning to ripen, yey! I have at least one Tomato nearly ready on all eight plants. That’s a potential Tomato meal before we go on holiday. Well, that’s better than last year. All my Tomatoes were pretty much green and hard at the end of Aug 2008.

This year, we’re heading towards ripeness with no…okay a tiny bit of… blight detected. I’m confident though that with the watering hand of our neighbour, and the fact that I’m growing a blight resistant variety, we’ll be returning to bucket loads of juicy, ripe Tomatoes. If not – I’ve decided to have a mini-breakdown.

What possessed me to book our holiday smack bang in the middle of Tomato season, I don’t know? Maybe it was lure of a French bargain and a heated pool? In any case, I’m hoping that Ferline will do me proud and help me on the road to Tomato recovery.

In an attempt to ripen a few early I’m trying the ‘rotting banana skin under the plant’ trick. I’ve no evidence that it works but I’m giving it a go anyway. I could take them off the plant and ripen them indoors. And there are tons of ways you can ripen green Tomatoes, but really why would you bother? They never taste anything like the vine-ripened ones and if you have green Tomatoes, it’s a great excuse to make Green Tomato Chutney. I think I’m going to take my chances on the vine.

How’s everyone else doing with their outdoor Tomatoes? Any tips for early ripening?

Everything (well almost, everything) is green in my garden at the moment. At this time of year all of the fruit is unripe and most of the things that are ready for harvest are either green (Lettuce, Spinach, Kale etc) or the colour is under the ground (Carrots, Radish etc). With the exception of my Lollo Rosso Lettuce and my amazing display of Chive flowers virtually everything else is green. My Strawberries, as you can see above, are still green.

My Blackcurrants are plentiful, but you guessed it, still green.

My Peaches are fluffy and cute but very much still green.

But, my Redcurrants, well, they are mostly green but today I noticed that one of them has a tiny patch of pink on it. Yey! Bring on the summer – full of ripe, fragrant fruit and a garden full of colour.