The path to sustainability and growing your own food is not always an easy one. The weather in our part of the world this summer just hasn’t been kind to our vegetable garden. Apart from the cucumbers, potatoes and pumpkins everything has been limping along, and our tomatoes have probably been the most affected. We grew several different varieties and all the plants have developed into good size bushes with decent amounts of fruit (which we have to put down to the Ecoworm fertiliser that we apply fortnightly) but sadly they’ve just not been ripening.
Most of July and August has been cool and cloudy with little or no sunshine, and quite frankly it’s been a vegetable growing nightmare. To make things even trickier, our tomato plants have now also been afflicted with blight, putting the remainder of the harvest at risk, and it’s left me questioning whether we’ll bother with growing tomatoes next year.
Check out the video below to see how our tomatoes have done this season, and please leave a comment about your homegrown tomatoes below.
Very impressive, perhaps you could point out to the Government that growing food to turn into methanol to put in petrol is not the best use of farmland.
The same problem here. But I removed all the leaves on my tomato plants as soon as most of the fruit had formed which helped a lot. Mine are slightly under cover under a balcony, but the humidity is as bad as rain I think. They are not ripening very quickly either! I am also wondering whether to bother next year, but it varies so much. Last year was an amazing year for tomatoes. Next year, who knows! Good luck ripening yours.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing Cathy. I think I’ll give the tomatoes another chance next year, but maybe only grow 2-3 bushes and see where that takes us.
We have similar trouble with Hokkaido; it’s just too wet, and now it’s a race between us and the slugs for the pumpkin, and us and mildew for the plant, Tomatoes thankfully recovered a bit and produced some tasty fruits in the past weeks. It was a good year for berries, but not for cherries and apples. Overall, meh.
Thanks for sharing Christian. It has been such a funny year for growing you own veg. Berries and apples have been poor for us, but most of our bushes and plants are still establishing. Our plum trees are coming really well though, and we’re starting to enjoy some great plums.