Ruud Kleinpaste: Tomatoes till the end

I remember Jack telling me he’d harvested his tomatoes in February and was pleased with the crop. 

I reckon that —especially in the North— tomatoes can go on and on and on; here in Canterbury they grow well into autumn (April, May) until the frosts start to play havoc. 

In my tunnel house I carry on harvesting them till June, sometimes July! 

This is what they look like in February/March:  

  

The green tomatoes are still on the plant. 

These will easily ripen as long as you water and fertilise the plants with a fruit-fertiliser (sufficient Potash – K). Keep trimming the laterals and keep tying up the vines to the stakes. 

Each week I do a thorough harvest of all the tomatoes that are ripe or almost ripe. 

Pink Berkely Tie-Dye is quite lovely coloured and firm, great for fried tomatoes with eggs. 

 

My biggest crop is F100 (sweet cherry tomatoes) that come in red and Brown-ish hues; The original F 100 is really long-lasting on the plant and keeps going the longest. It’s my standard variety that is best represented in the tunnel house. It’s also the basic tomato for roasted tomato sauce, creating the Bolognese for decent Italian meals 

Another good general processing tomato is “Tigerella”, this one goes on till May at least – sometimes well into June. 

Roasting them is a piece of cake; olive-oil over the top, plus some onions, paprika and later, basil. Not too high in temperature (150 is usually enough), blitz them when done, if you like, and freeze them in ziplock bags and you’ll have tomato sauce for the year. 

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