The tomato project part three.

Ok so its well over a month since my last update on my tomatoes. So much for my idea of providing regular updates on on my 2013-14 harvest. In a quick round up here's whats been happening in each of my growing locations:

Street planter boxes:

The planter boxes have been what's keeping my salads stocked over the summer. I have ended up with 2 yellow pear and 2 regular cherry tomato plants that have been producing a couple of punnets worth per week.

I also have a mini roma (which suffered from blossom end rot early in the season and is only started to ripen unblemished fruit) and this large unknown variety (below), Its one of the varieties from Bek's seed collection and whatever it is, the tomatoes made a fantastic rich sauce for my pasta the other night!

Backyard:

The rats have come back and have been busy stripping all the cherry tomatoes from along the back fence. We have recently started trapping again and I tried some mental deterrent for the rats by placing a small bit of the cats poo (relocated from the chooks dust bath pit URGH) on the fence railing that they use as their entry point. To date both deterrents have failed.

Community garden plot:

The hopes and dreams of my community garden plot tomato crop have largely now faded thanks to a plague of harlequin bugs that have pretty much taken over. They seemed to have dropped off over recent weeks but its now too late to rescue any kind of serious harvest. Here's a selection of harvested tomatoes showing the little white spots indicating harlequin bug damage. Basically it seems that by sticking their sucking mouth parts in into the flesh it encourages the development of a thickened skin. This doesn't make tomatoes conducive to salads so I pretty much chop them up and freeze or use straight away in any dish that calls for a tin of tomatoes.

I am wanting to find out more about the harlequin bug life cycle with a hope of finding out if there is anything that can be done to stop their development because nothing seems to kill them. Information seems very thin on the ground. In the past I have tried sprays both natural (garlic,chili) and chemical (yep I was really that desperate to get out the Confidor spray). Recently I have tried drowning them in a spray of soapy water- I reckon that kills about 10% them,  but even then I am not sure if its real death or suspended animation until they dry out.  Based on my observations I wondering if they need undisturbed soil or mulch to commence their life cycle as they have been very much absent from my garden since I introduced my chickens. Either way any subsequent harlequin plague may be a deal breaker for my continued participation in the community garden next year.

The tomato project- Part two 'Going Pear Shaped'

At last my first tomato for the year....

And the winner is a 'yellow pear' variety

Harvested on Tuesday 7 January- that has to be a record for tomato harvesting lateness?

This little one was harvested from one of the tomato plants I popped into an empty spot in one of the street planter boxes way back in August! I thought that would be way too early, but it seems to have worked,

The fact it was a yellow pear in that planter means something strange has definitely gone on with my seed sowing? There are little baby pear shaped tomatoes springing up everywhere! in the planters and in my back garden.

It's strange because last year I got two spindly little 'yellow pear' plants very late in the piece from our local veggie swap. They were soon swamped and over-shadowed by the standard cherry tomatoes- (I call them 'feral cherries' because they seem to spring up everywhere). All in all I must have harvested only about 3 or 4 'yellow pears' last year. One of which I kept for seed. Normally the way this works is that I take the seeds and spread them onto a piece of paper towel. I write the name of the variety on the paper towel fold it in half an put it on the window sill to dry for a few days or so. After that I pop the piece of paper with the seeds still stuck to it into an envelope, maybe with a couple of other folded up pieces. When it comes time to plant the seeds I peel each seed gently off the paper. It's amazing that so many seeds from just one tiny tomato have managed to grow and I am pretty sure they were supposed to come from the piece of paper that said regular 'feral' cherry so I am thinking that in some stage of  the process the yellow pear got mixed up with the 'feral cherry'. I am wondering even if they have cross pollinated? I will find out when the others ripen.

In other tomato news down at the community garden plot where I am testing Bek's varieties the only ones that appear to have fruit at last count were the Ned Kelly and the Big Beef. With hot weather finally on the way I am looking forward to some more tomatoes soon.

The tomato project -part 1

My tomato patch at the community garden

It seems ages since I have had a decent crop of tomatoes. I have to swing my mind back 13 years to a rental share house on the other side town where it seemed like magically with little effort we just had buckets of them -quite literally. Here at my current home, the past few years have not been kind to my tomato growing efforts. Throw in climatic factors; too hot, too cold; not enough rain; too much rain (Melbourne's erratic weather),  lack of full sun and my experiments (pre-chook days) with perhaps a bit of an overdose on worm castings and worm wee that yielded huge green plants but little fruit,  its been a long time since my last bumper harvest. Last year for the first time I had a decent crop ready to ripen but that disappeared thanks to a boom in the population of the local rats.

This year,back in the depths of winter, I decided to get organised a set up a tomato growing strategy. It started with Bek's call out to help her clear out her seed collection. It was very exciting to receive in the old fashioned post a beautiful envelope containing neatly labelled plastic zip-lock bags with the following selection:

• Ned Kelly
• Big Beef
• Champion
• New Yorker
• Mortgage Lifter
• (and most intriguingly) Big White Pink Stripe (lets call that BWPS).

To that collection I added two kinds of cherry, Yellow pear and some Mini Roma. The cherry tomatoes included a small sweet tomato I took from the planter garden (variety unknown) and what I refer to as feral cherry- the cherry tomatoes that seem to crop up everywhere around the garden. Unfortunately due to an accident during seed sowing the Mini Roma got tipped into the BWPS so its going to be interesting to see what grows where.

My first step back in July was sowing a few of each into strawberry and tomato punnets. These act as perfect mini greenhouses out on the front porch in the northern winter sun. The punnets were lined up in a kitty litter tray so they could be bought inside and put in front of the heater at night. That technique seems to work and I got excellent germination. Once the plants had their first sets of decent leaves I planted them out into single tubes or two by two into small pots.

Having grown far too many seedlings for my own use (I have kept 2 of each of the standard varieties) I sold seedlings off for a gold coin donation at work and at a little stall I set up for an hour and a half as part of the Garage Sale Trail Day (basically this was an event encouraging everyone to have garage sales that offered me the chance to publicise my sale via a listing on the website). With very little effort, my combined sales of excess chilies, eggplants and capsicum came to $52 which has been donated to Oxfam to help fund local food growing programs in East Timor.

This year with my expansion out into a community garden, I have shifted the focus on my backyard beds leaving only cherry varieties in the backyard. There are numerous cherry plants filling out the various pots and tubs and a row of the 'feral' variety lined up on the back fence. Yellow pears and either mini roma or BWPS are out in the planter boxes and a full plot of standard tomatoes in the community garden plot. Not content with that I have planted out all my left over seedlings in the adjacent plot that seems to have been abandoned. I am hoping with any success the community garden will be so overrun with tomatoes that the crop from that bed can be distributed to one of the many community or refugee  groups that could use donations of fresh vegetables. Stay tuned to see how it all works out!

Tomato salsa

Its been a while since I posted on the blog and this has largely been due to my lack of inspiration from the garden. A string of warm weather and 2 weeks absence from my weekly Vic Market shop have limited my creativity in the kitchen. As far as my challenge goes its been about as exciting as 'tomatoes' with the salad to accompany chops on the BBQ.  The highlight of this period was spending the long weekend with friends down at Somers on the Mornington Peninsula. The weather was calm and balmy, so on Friday night G took a net and torch down to the beach and caught a bag full of garfish. The fish were carefully cut down the centre, gutted and backbones removed, flattened with a mallet to break down the smaller bones and simply pan fried with salt and pepper. I served this with a simple tomato salsa; fresh tomatoes, a few slices of red onion, generous amount of salt and freshly ground pepper, topped with home grown basil. Combined with the sweet, fresh flavours of the fish it was the perfect summer meal.