Vert-à-Go

photo: the first tomato of the year from my garden. Anyone for gazpacho?

My son enthusiastically (but somewhat prematurely) picked the first tomato off one of the Prairie Pride tomato plants I have growing in 5 gallon pails in the back garden last week (I quickly ran out of space in the ground for all of the varieties that I wanted to try this spring–Sweet Millions, Sun Gold, Green Zebra, Mr Stripey, roma, Thai Pink Egg, Toma Verde, and another tomatillo). We finished ripening it in a bowl in the kitchen and it was delicious.

This has been a very grey and rainy summer, and the tomatoes have not had nearly the amount of sun that they would have liked. In particular, the tomato plants on the side of the garden that gets fewer hours of sun are looking rather spindly. I’m hoping they will still be able to catch up a bit, but we will really need some substantial light and heat. The tomatillos, on the other hand, are about 5 feet tall and taking over the world! I have been dreaming of my sisters’ tomatillo soup ever since I spotted the plants at the nursery this spring, so they can grow 10 feet tall and sprout a million of them if they like.

This year has been an experiment in using an organic rather than chemical fertiliser–I just hope we get some more sun soon so that I can properly judge how the performance compares. I need to get out there this weekend and reinforce the staking–I’m using the tomato spirals from Lee Valley (no longer available??) this year and they’re working really well. So far I haven’t had any breakage casualties from the torrential rains we’ve been having this summer (we’ve missed the hail so far, thank goodness).

Whether or not you should prune your tomatoes seems to be a hotly debated topic–should you sacrifice quantity of fruit to achieve greater size and flavour? I do tend to pinch off the small suckers after a certain point (but the most important variable I seem to deal with every year in terms of tomato production is really whether we get enough sun or not).

Here is a video that shows you exactly how to prune your tomatoes

And another very comprehensive article on the same subject

This article by Jackie Bantle from the U of S Gardenline on summertime care of tomatoes also has some good advice on how to harvest your tomatoes:

“Harvesting tomatoes requires a gentle hand to remove the fruit without damaging the plant or unripe fruits that may be closely associated with the one you are picking. You must pick tomatoes at the right stage of maturity. Tomatoes will ripen naturally off the vine once they have reached the stage of maturity known as “hard green,” but a tomato is considered to be mature only when it has reached the “breaker stage” of development.

The breaker stage is indicated by the appearance of any pink or red colour on the fruit. At this point, all the chemical actions associated with ripening will proceed identically either on or off the plant, so the tomato that is picked at this point will be indistinguishable from one that has ripened fully on the vine. If a tomato has been picked prior to full ripeness it should be stored at normal room temperatures of about 15-20°C until ripe.”

As soon as I’ve got enough of the cherry tomatoes ripened, I’ll be making Madhur Jaffrey’s Moroccan tomato salad–I can’t wait. I’m also really hoping to get enough so that I can get my mom to teach me how to make canned salsa.

How are everyone else’s tomatoes doing?

Posted July 26th, 2008 under Action, Recipes, food, gardening, vegetarian. Tags: advice, food, gardening, Recipes, vegetarian
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