Tuesday 29 July 2014

Tomatoes - a harvest at last!

I had hoped to have a nice harvest of big Beefsteak tomatoes this year, mostly ones grown from seeds from a Facebook friend in Belgium who kindly sent me a big pack of seeds for not just tomatoes, but also peppers. If you want to see the complete list of varieties, just follow this this link ...

I won't bore you with the details again, but due to problems with compost contaminated by weedkiller, my harvest is very much reduced. However, I am finally harvesting tomatoes now, and that is a major milestone for me!


One of the big ones in that basket was "Larisa". I  have had only two fruits from my plant so far, but each one was over 300 grams.


The flesh of this tomato is a very pink shade of red, and very sweet. The shoulders of the fruits seem to be prone to remaining green


The other big tomato in my basket is the orange-coloured "Dynnye".


This particular specimen has a very pronounced heart shape. It weighed approximately 425 grams.


The yellow tomatoes at bottom right of this next photo are "Banana Legs".


"Banana Legs" looks like a yellow version of "San Marzano", but I regret to say that it is nowhere near as good in terms of texture or flavour. Of course this may be because the weedkiller problems have rendered it somewhat under par. In normal circumstances it might be better.

The small red tomatoes are "Maskotka", a variety that I have grown many times before. It's very reliable and produces exceptionally tasty fruit.


The medium-sized red fruits are "Orkado". In normal years these would be nice and round, but this year they are all "heart-shaped".


In every case, the pointed bit at the tip has not ripened like the rest of the tomato. This is definitely not Blossom End Rot, because the dark spot is not soft and squishy; it's dry.


Now what do you make of this enormous ugly beast?


This one is "Cherokee Purple". Not at all like the stylish regular-shaped fruits I had from this variety last year. Not only is this one a "double" - two fruits fused into one - but underneath it is dramatically "cat-faced":


As you can see, there are still a few bits that are under-ripe, but I decided I had to pick it anyway, because it was beginning to split, probably as a result of the sudden exceptionally heavy rain we had had the previous day.


It may not be pretty, but I'm sure it will be just fine when made into some sauce - all 536 grams of it!

Anyway, returning to the theme of this post, as indicated by its title, I'm going to end by showing you a photo of the inside of my fridge...


That's a bit more like it, eh?!

7 comments:

  1. Problems with compost or not, you're doing better than me on the tomato front. I've only got Maskotka ripening at the moment apart from a very few Gartenperle, all the larger ones are totally green.

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  2. Lovely tomatoes. So what is it that you close your bags with? I've never seen them before. Here I've only see the disposable twist ties.

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  3. That second photo looks like an apple.

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  4. Lovely (and HUGE!) assortment of tomatoes.

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  5. Well now they look good. So lucky you have these I'm very jealous! Of course these would all go perfectly with the huge amounts of buffalo mozzarella I brought back from Italia!!

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  6. That's quite a harvest! I love all those heart shaped tomatoes. :o) I only grow one tomato - Mortgage Lifter and we devour them as soon as they ripen.

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  7. The Dynnyne is particularly attractive. Glad you're getting a harvest.

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