'"Why Must it Always be Tomato Soup?"'

[faustus]

I've never been much of a gardener, and as is traditional, Gardener's Question Time is turned off faster than even sports coverage. Mostly it's been the lack of garden to do it in - and I don't believe in Blue Peter-style lifestyle porn. Someone, sometime, bought me some Stripey Tiger tomato seeds, which I grew in a large pot on my attic kitchen table in the Louis Street flat, and which was planted out when I moved back in with the Aged Ps. It was too late in the summer for them to ripen and so I was left with green tomato, fodder for chutney.

Last year, with a reasonable garden in Henry Court, I created myself a little patch of earth and grew a couple of tomato plants and some brussels. I got a few tomatoes off the tomato plants, but the brussels never quite took.

This year, with a bigger area, I thought I should try a little more than that. Brogdale is just down the road, and I'm quite taken by the idea of growing or adopting rare breeds, perhaps even growing illegal tomatoes. But that involves getting an ass in gear. There was also the little matter of the swing, of course, held in place by concrete footings, which took the "foot" part of that deadly seriously. Three spanners and a professional electric drill latter, I had a patch to cultivate and a proto rockery and N had a swing for his nieces.

I started growing tomatoes, brussels, broad beans and beats in pots, transplanting them to bigger pots when they got too big, passing some of the tomato seedlings on to Tilothing, who is much better at this kind of thing, and eventually transplanting them into the garden. There were cauli and chilli seeds, but I never got round to them as it was the end of the planting season.

The slugs waged war on the brussels, and the ants on whatever it was that was eating the broad beans, and well, I didn't really help the broadbeans by trying to persuade them to use the trellis in the dark - which is to say I was doing the persuading in the dark, I wanted the broad beans to use the trellis 24/7, not just as some form of bondage curfew. The beet leaves were pretty chomped as well, but the tomatoes survived, with one exception.

It's been a long, hot summer, and I've been busy. I would have been busy if it was a short hot summer, for that matter. Anyway, I didn't stake the tomato plants early enough, and I never got round to buying more substantial bamboo canes. Naturally they've reverted to creepers, but I still spent many hours counting tomato plants, in what passes for spectator sport around here. I stopped when it passed sixty, and I finally did some removal of unneeded branches, and waited for them to ripen.

Then the summer broke. I was still busy. And it rained and it rained and it rained.

The tomatoes got bigger, and some of them turned yellow. Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a look. The only ones that have ripened have exploded, and some were beginning to burst. I fear these may turn out to be all too watery. What was clear, given that the ground lying ones are going manky, and wasps and maybe birds are drilling into some of the rest, was that it was harvest time. Discarding the damaged goods into the composter, I managed to get a bucket load from the plants, and there may be a few more to get in a week or so. I also decided to pick a few of the beets, although I admit I never did the research to establish how you knew there were ready.

I need to get hold of some green manure to dig over and enrich the patch for next year, so a trip to a garden centre may be in order - although the bike is buggered again. Perhaps some potatos over the winter, and then broad beans, tomatoes, beets, caulis and chilli for next year. Unless I'm busy.

In the mean time window sill and airing cupboard ripening. And more green tomato chutney.

And maybe tomato soup.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Why am I always Kate Winslett?