RIP Tomatoes

On Monday 2nd April I was having a good day. I'd done lots of planting:

• Spring onions in planter
• Calabrese broccoli
• Romanesco broccoli
• Purple sprouting broccoli
• Courgettes
• Sweetcorn

I also started off our first batch of salads:

• Lollo Rosso
• Rocket
• Lamb's lettuce
• Little Gem
• Mixed red and green lettuces

I then thinned out my tomato seedlings - they were doing very nicely and needed their own space.

Then disaster.

A few nights later there was a really bad frost. This was the end of the road for almost all my tomatoes.

Tomatoes with frostbite

Even more annoying was the fact that I had an electric greenhouse heater that was left from the previous owners of our house. I'd not given it much thought and just shoved it in the garage.

No more frost here - hopefully

Anyway, after that frost I dug it out and tried finding some instructions for it on the internet. Whist I could not find any actual instructions, I found out that it has a Frost-Guard setting to make it switch on if the temperature drops below 5°C.

So now, this heater is plugged in and on the frost guard setting. I've checked on my electricity monitor and it looks like it kicks in during the night.

I know it's a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it's another lesson learned the hard way.

New Beginnings

Spring is around the corner and so Matt's Patch is being reborn. Yes - I'm back!

I have been given a new allotment in the village which means I should be able to spend more time there, or rather, it should be easier to pop in and do bits and bobs.
I hand over the cash and get to see where my plot is on March 5th.

In the mean time I have taken advantage of the slight warming of the weather to plant some seeds.

A week ago (Feb 19th) I planted the following:

• Tomatoes - Sweet Million F1
• Tomatoes - Alicante
• Peppers - multi-coloured rainbow mix
• Broad beans left over from a two years ago - will they work? I'll let you know!

Although I'll be getting a variety of potatoes from Coventry Market, I picked up a few of these blue ones while I have having a scout around the market stall. I think they're the same as these.

Green Tomato Chutney (at last)

I've been meaning to write this up for ages!

With my left over green tomatoes there is only one thing to do - Green Tomato Chutney of course! I looked about for recipes and it seems like everyone's got their own, so I borrowed bits from all over the place, but the main idea was taken from margeland.co.uk

I had to adjust the quantities to marry up with the amount of tomatoes I had. I also sterilised my old coffee jars in a Milton solution overnight (the same strength as used for babies bottles).

Now the main point of this Matt's Patch entry is really for my own benefit (to record the recipe) as I think the resulting chutney is a little too sweet - not much mind, just a tad. Sort of heading towards a sweet tomato/onion relish. Having said that it is very nice and is beautiful on some strong mature cheddar!

One thing that surprised me about Green Tomato Chutney, is that I thought it would be mainly, well, green tomatoes. However that's not the case - there are a lot of other ingredients.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

• 650g green tomatoes
• 330g cooking apples, peeled and diced
• 340g shallots, peeled
• 300g sultanas
• 300g demerara sugar
• 300ml malt vinegar
• 1 chilli
• 1 piece of ginger, about 1cm
• 1 tsp salt

The weights above are what I put in but as a rough guide I think they are about half the quantity of the tomatoes (600 vs 300).
Method:

1. Prepare the tomatoes. Wash them and cut them in half or smaller if they are quite big.
2. Cut the chilli in half and remove the seeds.
3. Peel the ginger and gently squash it a bit to allow it to release its flavour.
4. Place the tomatoes, shallots and apples in a food processor and chop them up, but not too much.
5. In a large, deep cooking pot place the chopped items along with the vinegar, sugar, raisins and salt. Mix well.
6. Add the chilli and ginger and stir again. Put the heat on and bring the chutney to the boil. Keep stirring to make sure the sugar dissolves and the bottom of the pot doesn't catch. (It was at this point I panicked that I'd overdone it with the vinegar but it all turned out ok in the end, though it does get in your nose while it's cooking!)

Just starting to cook


7. Once the mixture is at a good boiling stage turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer the chutney for at least an hour, if not more. Also you will need to stir the chutney from time to time.

Coming along nicely


8. Once the chutney has attained a jam like consistency it is done. Take out the chilli and ginger and discard.
9. Carefully spoon the chutney into the sterilised jars. It is a good idea to make sure the jars are warmed too so as not to crack when the hot chutney goes in! You want to pack the chutney in so there are no air bubbles.
10. Create a seal over the surface of the chutney with a bit of folded clingfilm. Put the lids on tightly.
11. Leave the jars to cool thoroughly. It is this process that 'seals' the lids on tight! Once opened keep the chutney in the fridge.

Two jars of GTC!

Next time I make this I will reduce either the sultanas or the sugar, just to ease off on the sweetness.

News at last

Hello! I'm back! I can only apologise for the prolonged absence. So without further ado here's what's been happening on Matt's Patch in September and October.

After all the rain we've had in August the last two months have been gorgeously warm and dry. This has helped keep the raspberries coming. This is how many we picked yesterday (with still plenty on the canes as we head into the shorter days of November):

Raspberries still going

Along with the raspberries our tomatoes in the greenhouse kept cropping too. Now though they have slowed down so I decided to harvest them all. The plan is to make a green tomato chutney - I'll have to dig out a recipe somewhere (unless someone can recommend one).

Last of the tomatoes

Back in June we planted carrots in two buckets in a corner of the greenhouse. We just let them get on with it. The thinking was that as they got bigger, I'd thin them out as and when we needed little carrots for the children. However they never really seemed to take off. Maybe they were too densely planted. Anyway, on the weekend Megan and I picked what was left in the buckets. Their sizes varied quite considerably, and considering that they were a small variety we did get some decent sized ones. After a clean-up this is what we were left with:

Bright orange carrots

On to my planter. Although the last couple of months have been very mild, the lettuce that was in the planter just stopped growing. Likewise the peppers never did much. I think they definitely need to be in the greenhouse, or at the very least under some cover to get extra heat. This is the best one, from of six plants! (unfortunately the photo is out of focus but by the time I noticed the pepper had been used in a chili con carne!)

One red pepper

So, after collecting the veg that was still in the greenhouse, the time came to give it a good clean and get it ready for more planting.

So I'm going to have a little think now, about what can be planted - either in the planter or in pots in the greenhouse - which is unheated.
I'm also going to write up my experiences in the first year of Matt's Patch and what lessons have been learned.

A nice clean greenhouse

Too busy to blog

Blimey - it's the end of August and I have not written a word this month on Matt's Patch! That's not acceptable at all!

Well, we've all been a bit busy, with visiting family in Pembrokeshire, camping in Cornwall amongst other things.

While we were were away last week, we asked our neighbour Chris to look after the greenhouse and water the toms and cucs. It's a lot of responsibility looking after the Patch!

This is what we came back to - lots of gorgeous red tomatoes!

Lovely red tomatoes

Plus a couple of large cucumbers and a good few raspberries too! Chris should look after things a bit more often!

First Courgette

Meet our first courgette! Picked this very morning. Ok, so it's a little wonky and wouldn't make it past an EU market inspector but hey - it's the first proper produce from Matt's Patch (lettuce doesn't really count). So, in anticipation of a glut of courgettes I've been looking up recipes. Obviously there's fritters, but I'm more interested in Courgette Cake (a bit like carrot cake but, you've guessed it, with courgette instread). Another recipe I've found was on a Waitrose card for Minted Courgette Soup.

First courgette - hopefully one of many

I also thought I'd show the progress of the broad beans - they're coming along nicely. I've found a recipe for these too that I want to try - from the Guardian's gardening blog. I haven't planted our French beans out yet, so broad beans are all we've got to look at at the moment.

Beans are getting fatter - won't be long now ...

What I have done is to give the 4 cucumber plants a bigger home. This is two of them in a trough. As for the other two (not pictured), one is a bit of a runt so may not make it through the stress of moving house! Let's hope they do better than the last lot, otherwise I'll just give up with cucumbers.

Cucumbers have been moved to bigger homes

Our tomatoes seem to be quite a way behind other people's. Never the less, they have started producing flowers which I am duly tapping when I pass by to help with pollination. I'm also pinching out the side shoots that grow between the main stem and the side leaves. This leaves a nice smell of tomatoes on your hands!

A little late but we have tomato flowers

Emily and Megan can't wait for more sunshine to help ripen the strawberries. They're so very close to being ready it's painful. Even with the mesh over them, something has still managed to get in and half-eat a couple. Why do they do that? If you don't like strawberries LEAVE THEM ALONE! GRRRR!

mmmmm! Strawberries. Gorgeous!

It Worked!

My new cucumbers have germinated! The packet said seedlings should appear in 3-5 days. I must admit I was sceptical. However after three days all four seeds have come good - so good in fact that I've had to get a bigger lid on my home made propagator! I'm going to leave them in there now for a few more days.

Germinated cucumbers in my home made propagator

Other News
This is the view of the potato patch. I've earthed them up twice but still they grow like things possessed! Maybe I'll do it one more time and then leave them alone. As for the ones in containers, they are full to the brim with earth so not a lot of choice with those!

Potatoes growing well

I have transplanted the best French Beans into their own individual pots (bottom of picture), along with 6 bell pepper plants (top-right). There is also one tomato plant which has not been used yet. The whole internet gardening fraternity seems to have gone mad on 'upside down tomatoes'. Here is another link. I may have a go at this - I've not decided yet, but it would be a shame to waste the plant by not doing anything with it.

French beans (bottom) and peppers (top right)

The Greenhouse Effect

The people we bought our house from were kind enough to leave their greenhouse complete with aluminium racks and even an old wireless thermometer which looked like it hadn't worked in ages. After fitting new batteries to the thermometer it burst into life. There should be another part to it so that the greenhouse temperature can be monitored from the comfort of the house. We've never found this part - maybe it died some time ago. Anyway the main bit is working and the other day it reported that it was 25°C. Toasty!

Over the winter the only thing in the greenhouse was a couple of bales of hay for the guinea pig. Obviously that had to change so just over a week ago (Sunday 22nd Feb) Megan and I set about planting our vegetable seeds. So far we have planted some of the following:

• Courgettes (Astia F1)
  
• Broad beans - Dwarf type (The Sutton)
  
• Tomatoes (Shirley F1)
  
• Salads made up of lettuce, land cress (which is like water cress only ... on land) and spinach
  
• Bell Peppers of various types although they were all in one packet. Hmmm.

The first to show their faces were some of the lettuce plants. Well done, we have a winner!

With the salad plants I'm going to (hopefully) plant some every 3-4 weeks so that there is a nice steady supply. Once large enough they will go outside in a planter. Probably to be eaten by slugs. I think the pecking order will be slugs, us, then Patch the guinea pig.

This last weekend I planted some cucumber (Telegraph) seeds - all five of them! According to the packet, if trained properly they could reach 50cm! Which just begs the question how exactly do you train a cucumber?

I still have French Beans to plant but according to the packet it's still too early - even in a greenhouse. What do they know - I may just put some in pots just to see ...