Kitchen Garden Forum

Still no ripening tomatoes despite the sunshine and temperatures in the polytunnel above 40C most days for the past couple of weeks. I had better get ready for making sauce and soup for the freezer in a few weeks' time! Are you chaps picking ripe toms or peppers yet? PS: The sharp-eyed among you may spot the occasional banana skin among the fruit. hasn't helped as yet!

Lots of tomatoes, picked 9 lbs yesterday! Mixture of cherries including our favourites Sungold and Black Opal; various beefsteaks Yellow Brandywine, Beefmaster and Cherokee Purple; the two small yellow ones at the front are Yellow Delight - free with KG.
Getting lots of green sweet peppers but not coloured yet, some chillis are red already. Lunch the last few days has been a sort of ratatouille as we also have aubergines ready, not sure french beans are in the traditional recipe though.

Mind are just starting to ripen ,I always plant mine late ,people on the allotment have been picking them for over three weeks

Picking ripe tumbling red and yellow tomatoes from outdoors and my first red peppers, again in outdoor pots will be ready for picking soon. I have good sized outdoor green tomatoes which don,t look as if they will grow any more in size but surprisingly they're showing no sign of ripening yet despite all the sun we've had.

This is probably just as well in a way because many of them will need processing in some way and our two freezers are still full with a lot of last year's produce. At some point I,m going to have to recognise that I should really only be growing for a household of two people and not the entire British Army !

Wow Geoff what a great selection. I am very jealous. I do have lots of peppers (still green) and my aubergines are yet to set any fruit. Lots of cucumbers (of course). I'm going to pickle some of those tonight.

Afternoon Steve, mine are roughly at the same stage as yours but, it won't be that long before they start ripening. sometimes a little patience is needed.....even from a KG Editor...

These are being grown outdoors against my house wall.
I,m wondering whether removing a few odd leaves would hasten the ripening process although they're now being covered with a net curtain during the hottest part of the day to prevent fruit scorching blotches.

Yes I'm thinking the same thing about my tomatoes Primrose. Might do some trimming tonight. Too hot in the polytunnel now!

I'm away but the under-gardner says she has picked some of the tomatoes we are growing in hanging baskets.

A few of my outdoor tomatoes. Interesting that the leaves on the low tumbling tomatoes in the front of the border are so "wispy". The leaves on the tumblers I have in patio pots which I "fed" with kitchen peelings to compost down all winter to provide nutrients look far more thick and lush but this hasn,t been at the expense of a good supply of tomatoes.

What a great tomato selection, Geoff! Mine is puny in comparison. Our peppers, both sweet and chilli, are just starting to colour. I hope they do their stuff before our village show at the beginning of September .....

Despite the 'You Wot'? comments from Mr Westi I buried banana skins under the planting hole before I put them in. Hard to compare due to the weather but they did develop nicely and look robust but no difference in the ripening of the fruit. Will try it again though as not exactly a hardship. I thought it had to be a whole banana to help ripen the fruit, not just the skin! Hmm! I learn again - love this site! Also I get to eat the banana - win/win!

When you say that you fed your pots with kitchen waste Primrose, how do you mean? I'm intrigued! Seems to give you good results!

Yes I know OH - I am probably being a bit impatient, but I keep promising Mrs Carrot lots of tomatoes and get frowned at when she has to buy them. Starting to feel inadequate - especially after seeing Geoff's harvest!

Steve, the apple cores, carrot peelings,banana skins, manky chopped outer cabbage leaves, chopped up dead house flowers and stalks etc which I put in my kitchen crockpot (and would normally out on the compost heap) are mixed in a big plastic gardening trug with most of with the compost from the patio pots once they've been emptied of plants In late autumn. .

I just mix everything together, return to the patio pots and let everything rot down over winter. They,re in a sunny position and over late autumn, winter and early spring the compost warms up sufficiently to allow everything to completely decompose by the time I,m ready to plant out my tumbling tomatoes..

It means I dont have to continually keep replenishing the compost in the pots as over the winter months they act as their own composters. I plant out my young tomato plants in them early (end April/early May) and cover them with Individual cloches made from scrounged water bottles from office water coolers. This means they flower and crop early so hopefully miss getting blighted so the compost doesn,t get infected. I also mix in water retention crystals into the compost before planting to help reduce watering.

For those who only have a limited growing space and need to grow mainly in pots it,s a good way of managing your compost. I,m not beyond putting the odd chopped banana skin and a few peelings on the surface of the compost while the tomatoes are growing to top up nutrition, . They're always alwsubsumed very quickly and these pots seem to produce better quality fruits than the tumbling plants in my soil borders.

Thanks Primrose! That's really interesting and I'll give it a go this winter.