The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: egbert on July 25, 2010, 07:52:27 pm
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Hi
I have been away for a week, come home to water my tomatoes and found that one large branch has snapped due to the weight, with lots of lovely green tomatoes on it >:(
Some of them are pretty much fully grown, just green, but a lot are smaller, still more rough skinned and firmer. I thought I read somewhere that they can be put in a drawer / cool dark place to ripen. Is this right? ???
Otherwise, anything I can do with unripe green tomatoes ??? :(
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You can ripen the bigger ones just by laying them out on a dish, especially if you put a ripe banana beside them (they give off ethylene gas which promotes ripening). They won't taste as good as those ripened on the plant. The smaller undeveloped ones will just go soggy. The classic thing to do with green tomatoes is to make chutney :yum: :yum: :yum:
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Green tomato chutney mmmmm. They have to be mature to ripen off the plant as said, usually done when you need to strip out the greenhouse to finish off the last of those toms.
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ps if they are mature on a branch just hang the branch up upside down in a good spot.
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Hi Hermit. I see you are in Shetland - do you have greenhouses up there? :o I thought they would just blow away ;D My greenhouse lives inside my polytunnel to give it a bit of protection from the winds and deep cold.
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Hi Fleecewife , I have a 35x15 polytunnel well sheltered by a bund and a barn with pallisade fencing to fill in the gaps. There are a lot of polys up here. First tunnels are popular and do storm fastenings which have been successful so far. I grow plum, salad and beef toms, about eighty plants in all crammed in there with allsorts of other veg. Trouble is it is a short season up here so most of the colder months it just stores cuttings for spring. I get very jealous of sayings like successional sowing :D
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Ah yes :D successional sowing doesn't happen here either. We go for one bumper crop then store the surplus. I always feel I must try to grow something through the winter but really the tunnel only keeps out 1 degree of cold so even some winter hardy crops struggle. I try winter lettuce each year but I don't think it's worth the bother. The tomatoes were still cropping at Christmas last year though - a bit blighty but many edible ones. I suppose the short winter days are a problem, much for for you than for me further south. The long summer days are a plus though compared to England :)
For our 21' x 42' tunnel (Northern Polytunnels) we have put up a 2m high windbreak netting barrier around the veg garden, with the tunnel plumb in the middle. We have also planted hedges and willow windbreaks outside that which have begun to create a slightly less windy micro climate. The first cover we put on 15 years ago lasted only 9 months til the first big wind. The replacement is still on - just :)
Many years ago we were thinking of moving to Shetland but at that time no-one seemed to have heard of polytunnels. The posting didn't materialise so now we just keep a few of the sheep along with our other breeds :)
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fried green tomato!! :D
My grandmother always told me to ripen tomatoes wrap them in newspaper and leave them on the windowsil
:)
Sam
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I have tried growing veg in winter in mine but doesnt work. Too cold and wet and not enough daylight. :( My cover is in its fourth year, a few tears but manmade ::) Should do another few years yet hopefully. I grow masses in summer and sees us through till next year with pickles(I am doing a marrow chutney as I type), jams and veg. Slow start this year though but looks promising now. A lot of polytunnels are going up now made from salmon cages but they are supposedly a bit fumey with the special marine plastic used in the hoops getting hot. 21' by 42' wow and I bet you could do with an even bigger one, they are never big enough are they? ;D
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Well I must admit I could use another one, possibly mesh covered, but the 42' length is about as long as I would want. I have double doors on one end and a single door at the other, with huge louvres at both ends but any longer and I would have serious ventilation problems on the odd occasion when there's no wind :D
What an interesting use for salmon cages. Wouldn't antihotspot tape solve the fume problem?
The biggest hole in my cover is sheep-made :D - 4 horned Jacob making his own way in to eat the brassicas, cl;osely followed by half a dozen of his chums :o. Now we are getting cracks because the polythene is getting brittle with age. We have a new cover ready and waiting but whenever is the best time to change it? When we get a suitable warm windless day, the thing is stuffed full of crops, and when there are no crops it's minus 15 and blowing a gale or there's a foot of snow lying ::)
I had forgotten about fried green tomatoes :yum: :yum:
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As I never had a greenhouse but always wanted to give tomatoes a go I always had lots of green ones...last year I made green tomato :&> mincemeat for Christmas, it was absolutely yummy. Maybe egglady does still have the webpage with the recipe?? First year I actually have red toamtoes thanks to the greenhouse ;D
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When the film Fried Green Tomatoes came out, and I had never had them before, I tried them - they are deelish! :yum:
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Sounds like you all need to post your recipes ;D
I ghave never had green tomato anything! :o
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My tomatoes are very slow to grow this year, ???
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I have lots of split ones! They are not quite ripe but already split - does it really have to do with not enough water? I seem to be watering endlessly in there... :&>
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I had a problem with splitting tomatoes & my dad said it was because I didn't water them at a similar time or too much at one time & not enough another. He said I should water as near to the same time every day & always a similar amount. He used to water in the morning & when he had had his tea & used a bucket with a jug to make sure he had given them the same amount.
Always seemed a lot of messing to me. I leave an inch space at top of the bucket they are planted in & fill with water till it reaches the top once a night & use feed once every 3 week. Seems to work.