Tomatoes - the second attempt

On Sunday I pulled out all the tomato plants. One or two had started to die off and frosts are forecast for this week. And I wanted to prepare the beds for some other crops. All up we had 12 tomato plants of a couple of different varieties, Berner Rose and Tommy Toe.

Last year, when we had a cool and reasonably wet summer, none of the seedlings started in the garage then under plastic outdoors grew to be viable plants. This year we had a gloriously warm and dry summer. I started the tomato seeds early in the spare bedroom which worked really well. I let the seedlings acclimatise outside for a while then transplanted them, and the plants grew healthy and strong. Loads of flowers turned into loads of small green tomatoes... but it was all too slow and autumn arrived. Despite the sunny days, the cooler temperatures left us with few ripening tomatoes.

Finally a couple of weeks ago I started pulling the ones that had started to change colour off the plants and put them in a bowl inside the house near the window. Now we've had six ripe enough to eat (very tasty) and a few more in the bowl are almost there.

Next year I am sure we will do better again, with a soon-to-be-revealed new and improved strategy.