Wednesday 23 February 2011

Summer Tomatoes – Yum!

Our Tomatoes

I think home grown tomatoes are most kitchen gardeners favourite vegetable.

We have tomatoes from seeds we germinated and a lot of self seeded tomatoes which just appeared in our garden when we spread out the contents of our worm farms.

We eat the tomatoes as a snack straight from the vine, with our basil and rocket salads, add them to frittatas and just freeze them whole to be cooked with onion and thyme in autumn when the vines have wilted.

We are having warm humid weather in Adelaide at the moment and new tomato self sown seedlings are appearing in the garden.

March will be warm so I expect we shall have tomatoes and fresh basil for a while yet.

The delicious pinkish tomato is called Eva Purple Ball, it is a gorgeous looking tomato.

7 comments:

vanessa said...

I love the super fresh color of that tomatoes. I love tomatoes too but not the ripe one. I eat tomatoes when its still in a green color :) We have a lot of it in our garden!

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Rachel said...

Can I ask if you have problems with the leaves dying back? Ours seem to grow great and healthy then start fruiting and the leaves start dying near the base of the plant until eventually all leaves are dead. The fruit seems to ripen okay but we don't get more flowers or fruit since it's dead by then. Happens with all varieties that we've planted or self-seeded.

Olive said...

Lime added to the soil at planting time will help with both blossom end rot and leaf wilt.
Love your purple ball tomato Maggie, haven't heard of that one before.

Rachel said...

Thanks Olive. Maggie also commented to me that it could be the sun but even the ones shaded seem to suffer. :(

Anonymous said...

And you have a variety of tomatoes there too. I love to eat them as I pick them. When I was a kid, during World War II, I used to pick tomatoes on farms where whole fields were planted in tomatoes. I think we were paid 10 cents to pick one hamper of tomatoes. We could make as much as we wanted to make but it took a long time to pick 10 hampers for a dollar bill.

I got to Japan in November 1953 and left in May 1956. The time is called the Occupation.

Japan was really was a different world then and I try to bring some of it back to life in my blog about Japan > My Travels in Japan

africanaussie said...

Hi Maggie,
gosh your tomatoes look delicious. I have just been planting out my vegetables. Since the floods our vegetables have become so expensive, so my vegetable bed is going to be chock-a-block this year. I just hope I get some tomatoes like yours :)

ACS Distance Education said...

The vegetable plot should be sited where:
• It receives maximum sunlight - around 6-8 hours a day. Tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, aubergines need the most sun. Root crops, such as carrots and beets, need from six to eight hours of sunlight every day. Leaf vegetables, such as lettuce and spinach, need around six hours of sunlight a day.
• It has good, well drained soil.
• It is relatively free from weeds and other competing plants.
• It has access to a suitable supply of water.
• It is sheltered from any prevailing winds.

The size of the vegetable plot will depend to a large extent on how much space you have available, and whether you are growing for your own use or as a commercial enterprise. As a general guide an area of 80 100 sq. metres can provide a family of four with an adequate yearly supply of fresh vegetables if you grow two or more crops in most parts of the plot each year.