Savour the Summer

Tomatoes are the ultimate summer crop - everything from the smell of the vines ripening, to that first glimpse of red readiness, to their irresistible bursting sweetness makes growing your own tomatoes entirely worthwhile. The variety available is astounding and for the home grower, tomatoes are one of the most exciting and money saving crops to grow. Most years at River Cottage I grew upwards of ten different varieties, everything from Amish Paste - a huge meaty fruit with a weighty flavour, perfect for grating into a sauce or slicing thickly with mozzarella - to Green Zebra, bright green when ripe, medium in size, with distinctive darker green zebra stripes, which look beautiful in a tomato salad. Whatever you choose, when grown with care, tomatoes are endlessly satisfying and unrivalled in taste, especially when eaten sun-warm and straight from the vine.

Saving tomato seed is the best way to ensure interesting varieties like these last for years to come, and I would encourage seed saving to anyone who grows their own. As long as the original seed was open pollinated and not hybridised you shouldn’t have any problems. Saving seed is all about selection, so when choosing a ripe fruit for saving, have a look at the plant first. Did it grow strong and true? Was it a heavy cropper? Was it healthy and disease free? Once you have selected your best plant, remove a ripe fruit (late in the season), slice in half along the equator, squeeze all the pulp and seed into a glass jar and leave to ferment for 3-4 days at room temperature, without a lid. After fermenting the seed, rinse and remove the pulp and lay the clean seeds on a non-stick surface to dry. Once fully dry to the touch, store the seeds in wax paper packets and label. These seeds should be viable for germination for the next two years.

Their life cycle starts in February when they are sown into seed trays (April for outdoor types), about 2cm apart. Tomatoes require 20º–25º temperatures for good germination and need to be hardened off at 15º before planting out. Once they show a couple of true leaves, transplant into 5cm pots, growing on until mid-April (June for outdoor types) when they are ready to plant out. Transplanting seedlings stimulates more growth and helps push the plants on to bigger and better things. I always grow our tomatoes in the greenhouse because they are far more productive than tomatoes grown outside. If you are going to grow them outside, be sure to site them in a sunny, sheltered position.

Tomatoes are best grown on strings suspended from the crop bars of a greenhouse or polytunnel. If you are growing tomatoes outside, building a frame over the top of your tomatoes can offer the same support. Once your tomatoes have reached the point where they need propping up, tie a loose loop around the stem of the plant, then run your string up to your support structure and tie off tight. The knot needs to be loose around the stem to allow it room to grow and expand. Going forward, as the tomato heads skyward, wind the vine around the string - this allows you to access all sides and makes it much easier for picking. Keep side-shoots on the tomatoes pinched out, to focus the plant’s energy on truss and fruit growth; this also stops your plant becoming a tangled mess. Side-shoots grow at 45º angles from the point where the leaf truss meets the main stem. This will decongest the plant, increase airflow and help to keep your plants free from fungal disease. As blight becomes more of a risk later in the summer, I start defoliation of the leaves from the ground up, removing leaves around the ripening fruit. By the end of the season all the leaves have been removed, aiding in the ripening of the last fruit trusses. As much as I love making green tomato chutney, it also nice to have sweet delicious fruit in the autumn.

Beware that overwatering your tomatoes can be detrimental to the health of your plants and subsequently fruit production. Nutrient deficiency, split tomatoes and curled leaves can be the result of over-saturation. It is important however, to keep the tomato growing areas damp to maintain good humidity and decrease the risk of red spider mite and whitefly. Most greenhouse pests prefer dry conditions. Planting basil around the base of the plants is a nice way to provide a living mulch, reducing evaporation and the need to water, and makes for perfect, summer salad convenience.

This post originally appeared as an article in the July 2019 edition of the Bridport Times , which can be read in its entirety online at www.bridporttimes.co.uk.