The weather and the crops are having a bit of an argument right now. The weather is convinced it’s the end of the season, you see. The crops still reckon it’s some time in early summer.
The chillies are turning a brilliant red and we’re going to have to find something good to do with them. But while they’re behaving themselves at the back of the greenhouse, the tomatoes that grow all along one side and out in the borders still reckon there’s plenty of summer to go: most of them are still hard and green.
That’s left us with two problems: what do we do with them, other than feed them to the chickens (and even they’re a bit sniffy about them), and how do we count them?
We picked three kilos this week, and that was only a sixth of what there is out there. Naturally, we made them into green tomato chutney (recipe coming soon), so they didn’t go to waste, but can we include them in our crop tally as they weren’t technically ripe, full-term fruits?
And when the others get past it, as they surely will as nobody can use that many green tomatoes, do we have to just write them off as lost? That seems an awful shame when we’ve gone to so much effort to grow them.
All in all, then, it’s been a disappointing summer for the tomatoes, and then plants themselves know it. They’ve started putting out new flowers, as if to try and make up for their bad behaviour. Little do they know it’s far too late.
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Have you thought about picking the rest of them and put them in a drawer or box with a banana. Hey presto – Ripe tomatoes! Works every time….
I grow toms outside as I don’t have a greenhouse. A few weeks ago, I cut the plants down as they had stopped growing, and put all the green tomatoes in a tray on the window sill in the conservatory. They will nearly all ripen, and taste just as good.