In his weekly Jamie’s Little Allotment column, Gayton gardener Jamie Marsh says today’s harvest can beat the winter blues…
I think I might have mentioned once or twice before that my favourite thing to grow on the plot is tomatoes. They’re easy to grow, really versatile and they taste so much better than anything you’ll find in the supermarket.
This year’s crop has been and, still is, really great. With all the sunshine and hot days we’ve had the plants have been romping away. I’ve grown a mix of varieties again, some of the trusty old favourites and a couple of new ones I wanted to try, and the flavour has been brilliant.
Tomatoes aplenty at Jamie’s allotment
There’s nothing quite like picking a sun-warmed tomato and eating it straight off the vine. The sweetness and juiciness just can’t be beaten and I honestly think it’s one of the simple joys of gardening.
As you probably know, plenty of feeding and watering is crucial for a good harvest and, pinching out side shoots is a must. But what some tomato growers don’t always realise is that, as we get towards the end of the season, there’s something else we should be doing too.
Tomatoes need a good seven to eight hours of sunshine a day to produce fruit. In mid-summer, with all those lovely hot sunny hours, a pollinated flower can take around 30 days to develop into a green fruit and then up to another 20 days to ripen on the vine. Once we start losing those eight hours of strong sunshine, the whole process slows down.
There’s always something new to pick this time of year
If you’ve been lucky enough to dodge blight, your plants will keep producing flowers right through. At first that seems fantastic, doesn’t it? But if you think about what I’ve just said, you’ll end up with lots of small, hard green tomatoes that never ripen properly.
So, what we need to do now is give the plants a bit of a tomato haircut. Take off about 70 to 80% of the leaves so the remaining sunshine can reach the fruits.
Pinch out the main growing stem so the plant isn’t wasting energy trying to get taller. And lastly, and I know this is the hardest bit, take off any new flowers that appear. It feels wrong, I know, but honestly it makes such a difference.
Doing this means the plant can put all its energy into swelling and ripening the fruit that has already set.
You’ll probably need to check every other day for new flowers and nip them off. Keep feeding too, the plants are really hungry at this stage. I’m feeding twice a week and watering at least every other day, depending on the weather.
If it’s particularly hot, I’ll sometimes give them a good soak in the morning and then another light water in the evening, just to stop the soil from drying out too much.
One of the things I love most about this time of year is deciding what to do with the harvest. A bowl of freshly picked cherry tomatoes doesn’t usually last very long in our house, they get eaten like sweets.
The bigger ones are perfect for slicing into a salad and, if I’ve got a big glut, I’ll make up a batch of tomato sauce for the freezer. It’s so handy to pull out in the winter months and it always brings back the taste of summer.
Standing in the polytunnel now, surrounded by ripening fruit and that lovely tomato smell, it still feels like proper tomato season. The plants are heavy with fruit, the sunshine is streaming in and every day there’s something new to pick.
It’s such a rewarding time and I always feel grateful for every tomato that makes it to the kitchen. There’s nothing quite like sitting down to a meal and knowing the star ingredient has come straight from the plot only minutes before.
Email me an let me know how your tomatoes have fared this year. Jamieslittleallotment@gmail.com
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