It’s harvest season for tomatoes and I have a lot of fruit on my plants but they are taking their sweet time in ripening up and I fear Autumn is fast approaching us here. I know, I know, green tomato chutney, but we still have some from two years ago!
Albenga Oxheart, looking good…just not the right colour!
If I do end up missing the ripening boat I’m going to uproot them and hang upside down in our (warm) shed to slowly ripen over Autumn/Winter. This is an idea I read in Lifestyle Block magazine (April 2017). Another suggestion they made was to pick the fruit and put in a paper bag and place in a warm spot to ripen. Now, I’ve always put my unripe fruit on a sunny window sill to finish their ripening – and of course this works, but it’s actually the warmth from the sun not the light that ripens them up and if they’re really green and you leave them to ripen in the sun (off the plant) you might end up with overly dry fruit. Well I never!
Black Beautys beautiful foliage
My Black Beauty zucchini has been giving and giving and my Rampicante has wanted to but its been having issues with either a lack of calcium or my erratic watering (the fruit has been getting soft ends). we might be coming right now…just as the mildew is setting in…
Curly zucchini (Rampicante)! But it’s really more of a squash
We are still having warm days but with misty mornings and drizzly rain as well, it’s like an open invitation for mildew and other fungal diseases. If you’re getting powdery mildew on your curcubits (and you still have an appetite for zucchini or your pumpkins/squashes need more development time) you can spray your plants with milk which is said to help.
Lanterns of green goodness
Tomatillos, wonderful things, so hardy, are looking beautiful. I almost don’t mind if they don’t ripen up in time~ they make for nice eye candy whilst the rest of my vege patch goes to tatters.
Because we moved here in November and my veg seedlings (tomatoes, zucchinis and tomatillos) had to recover from the spray drift they copped in Foxton, everything got in a bit later than I like. Que sera sera; I’ve been getting enough toms to of not needed to open a can of tomatoes in the last month or so and that’s good enough for me! (Though I will miss our tomato sauce)
Tigerella toms were one of the first of my tomatoes to ripen
So enjoy your harvest whatever it may be; it’s your very edible reward for all that hard graft/loving you’ve given your garden!
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