Kitchen Garden Forum

Just found blight on my tomato plants so have ripped all the plants up but saved the unripe fruit.

If the fruit looks unblemished, is it ok to make green tomato chutney with it so that it isn't a complete loss?

Anyone tried this before?

Many thanks.

Yes and yes.

Not much consolation though, is it?

Hi FPG

Sorry about your loss. The fruits look fine from your photo and the larger would be fine for chutney. Have a look at my recipe for the Best green tomato chutney - ever. It really is good and will be some consolation for your loss.

And I've posted a recipe for chicken with green tomatoes and coconut milk (P.3 of the recipe section). It works just as well if you use defrosted tomatoes. I froze loads last year!
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Granny

Thank you! Advice and recipes very gratefully received. I look forward to making chutney at the weekend.

We have blight on tomatoes too - outside the odds and ends that we couldn't get into the greenhouse are badly affected. Again this year blight has spread into the plot greenhouse. Even though we have kept the door shut as much as possible and removed lower leaves, and kept water to the roots when watering. Just a few leaves at the moment so we are stripping them off trying to keep the disease at bay until the tomatoes are ripened.

We do grow more tomatoes in a greenhouse in our garden which seem OK. We never had a problem in the days when over half the plots on site were derelict.

I don't know what's going on, but my toms are doing fine despite the rain [33 mm on Thursday night] and we have just been staying with friends near Harrogate whose plants are doing well also. In my case I have put down a lot of mulch round the plants amd they are in beds to the south of last year's and the year's before. In their case they have planted differing crops very close together in raised beds.

At the risk of becoming boring about this, can I just repeat what we do when we see signs of blight? We strip off all the tomatoes and take them into the house. In the sink we make up a solution of the stuff they use to sterilise babies' bottles (Milton's or own-label equivalent). We soak the tomatoes in this for five minutes. Then they are rinsed in clear water, patted dry, and put on the windowsills to ripen. This seems to kill any blight spores that are on the skins but haven't yet penetrated. You may lose a small percentage where the bligfht has got through, but overall you will save your crop.

Blight in the greenhouse is progressing so in a last ditch attempt I have stripped off all leaves from the plants to try to give the frit a chance of ripening

I've picked green tomatoes in a blighted area previously and they're fine for chutney but you really do have to wash them and use them immediately. If you can't get round to the task for a couple of days it can often be too late. There's also a recipe (found it on the internet) for sliced green fried tomatoes coated in something, cornmeal ? - can't remember what it was - which can also help use them up.

Primrose

Is it this?

http://southern-fried-food.suite101.com ... n_tomatoes

Rather you than me

So far the toms are ripening and looking OK so I am going to risk leaving them. I know green tom chutney is a good way of using them but at the end of the day we grow toms to have them in salads or freeze as tomato sauce.

So fingers crossed!!!

The removal of all the leaves on the tomatoes in the greenhouse affected with blight has worked well. No signs of blight on the fruit which are ripening well - RESULT!