My Tomato Crop - Better Late Than Never

First toms picked!

Due to Britain's wettest June since the 1950s, my precious tomatoes have taken their sweet time in ripening. But fortunately, with over a week of proper summer weather in late July, the crop is finally turning the corner. How much harvest I'll get is still a mystery with blight looming. I may be doing a lot with green tomatoes in the end, but we'll see.  There is a bit of whitefly, per usual, but last year we discovered Neem Oil nip this pest in the bud.

Sweet Red Cherry tomato

I still have a ton of pruning and weeding to do and today I will attempt to rope my daughter into helping with some maintenance. This may take some creative bribery, but she has been wanting to save up money for her model horse collection. I think a piece meal payment rather than by the hour is in order. Cross fingers this child labour helps to make some progress. Ha, ha! Seriously, it would be nice to afford labour, but it's not happening this year. It's just me and two massive greenhouses full of plants!

Lovely tomatillo lanterns

Besides the tomatoes, I've planted 40 some tomatillos which, for the most part, are coming along nicely. They are quite attractive plants, with the pretty lanterns hanging down, and bigger than I anticipated.  The branches spread and stakes alone aren't terribly helpful.  Cages would be better.  As a compromise, I've started adding extra stakes between the plants to create a support wall for the branches.  I'm not sure how long the fruits are supposed to take to grow. Most of the husks are still hollow. It's time to do some more research as I'll be looking for more recipes too.

In two weeks time I'll be attending the Cardigan River and Food Festival to flog all my fresh sauces and preserves. I'm really looking forward to this show because it should have good attendance and a wide variety of producers. And it's close so not too much driving!  Some of the cherry tomatoes
should be ready for harvest for my sauces but not much else, other than herbs.  But most of the shows I'll be attending will be in the fall, leading up to Christmas, so the harvest should be coming in like gang busters by then.

So for now, it's prune, weed, water.