A fine balance

Between the blight taking out my tomatoes & them ripening.

I've made 4 jars of spicy green tomato relish today, the plan had been to pick all the green ones before the brown patches of blight take them out.

But they are so close to ripening I just couldn't pick them all :tnp:.

The relish is great but i've been looking forward to home made tomato purree all summer so i'm going to do a daily check & keep my fingers crossed.

Anyone else in the same boat ?

 

Ziggy, take them off the plants and finish the ripening indoors. Wash them to get rid of any blight spores.:gnthb:

 

Hey Dai,

Already tried that, put them in a willow basket with a bananana & covered it with greaseproof paper, lost most of them within a day or so.:cry:

Have you had success doing that ? Am I doing something wrong ?

 

Use newspaper, rather than greaseproof. It " breathes " better.:gnthb:

 

I'll give it a go me old fruitbat, cheers :thumb:

 

Ermmmn. Not sure washing spores and using different paper and pointing it west to catch the right Karma and will stop the fungus once it's alive and thriving.

Once you've got the blight, put emergency plans A, B, C and Z into action. Get rid of everything in the bin or burn it, and if you must keep the fruit, give it the chutney treatment straight away.

It's a proper nasty old disease, is blight.

 

Toms picked & washed.



Have covered them with newspaper & made sure they are facing west :thumb:

Still have one plant in the garden thats still ok, it was a cutting that I put in well away from the others.

Will get some bordeaux mix tommorow as the maincrop spuds are still out there. I think they've been spared because I earthed them up with wood chippings so there was no soil to hold the spores.

 

Cheers John, thats what im hoping, you cant see from the pic, but I've put very small ripe ones from a different plant in among them.

Is there anything else, apart from bananananas that release ethylene gas ?

 

Any ripe fruit releases ethylene. It's the plant's signal to set seed and die back.

The riper the better. So before composting your fruit that you never got round to eating and is on the turn, stick it in your tom pile for a while.

 

Nice one Andrew. Have got half a melon in the fridge, will eat the best bits & use the rind.

 

does the Lambrini help?

 

When I ripened mine last year (a similar ammount to yours), I layered them in a cardboard box like they do with apples, layer of toms then cardboard layer etc... with 3 bananas at different levels, I checked every two days and most ripened within a week.

Steve...

 

Interesting fact about toms. If they haven't started ripening on the vine, they will never ripen - it's biologically impossible.

However, there's no way for the gardener to tell whether the process has started, because the tom will still be green when it does.


OK, it wasn't that interesting...but explains why some green toms will ripen after picking and some won't.

 

Hi Ziggy,
can't help you with your problem but....perhaps you can help me!
I have ton's of green toms with no sign of ripening (No blight but no sun either :( ) I didn't know they were useable whilst still green, any chance of getting your relish recipe :wink::hehe: