Sunday, August 25, 2013

Tomato wars

We are never that successful growing tomatoes down here on the North coast. The sea mists, high humidity in spring and early summer, and frequent rainy spells are just not conducive to healthy plants and high crop yields. This year we had a poor start with blight infection early on. We grow under plastic but have recently changed to grow under half a plastic shelter to increase air flow whilst giving partial protection from the mists. This seems to have helped.


We are really pleased with their progress in the past few weeks. We sprayed with a natural fungicide, stripped the affected parts of the plant and continue to remove any diseased leaves immediately. They are producing well considering and we have already eaten about 3 kg of them.


We normally rely on Luis' sister Rita for the main supply of tomatoes as she grows about 150 plants and we can take as many as we wish. We would make our year's supply of tomato pesto and pisto which is brilliant. Sadly, this year her crop was ruined with a massive hail storm with hail stones the size of golf balls destroying most crops over several square miles in Palencia. Fortunately she also grew some in the new poly tunnel which was also damaged in the storm but at least she will have some for her own family's needs. In the mean time we'll be thankful for the few tasty toms we have managed to grow at La Pasera.


9 comments:

  1. My tomatoes were very late to get going this year but are finally coming on really well - I have 70 plants, all in the polytunnel as I cannot grow them outside and today I made 8 x ¾ litre jars of passata, a cherry tomato quiche and 3 pots of ratatouille for the freezer ... and I have plenty more to deal with tomorrow. In contrast though, the onions and broad beans are awful this year. Oh well, you win some and you lose some!

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    1. Onions were grim here as well but it will be a good year for lots of other goodies so...we make the most of what we have.

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    2. Mind you, broad beans may have been better had the pigs not got into the veg patch and scoffed the early ones! Onions on the other hand needed no porcine help to be poor!

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  2. When we were in Galicia we found that cherry tomato's did well both in the tunnel and outside, we could not grow the larger types at all, they always succumbed to blight. Onions outside we found were a waste of time but those planted in Nov in the tunnel were great and stored well. We still grow both the cherry tomatoes and onion's in the tunnel and have a great crop from them both.

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    1. Onions usually perform well here but we had a poor early start. We've tried the Asturian wild cherry tomato this year but it's done nothing. Might try a cherry if we can find a blight resistant one. Poly tunnel envy here.

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  3. Well done. Cherry tomatoes are the only ones that I can ever grow successfully. This year I don't even have any of them, as the seedlings I bought that were supposed to be cherries were actually normal toms! #fail

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    1. Ah well, there's always next time. Have you tried the wild Asturian Cherry?

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  4. Impressive, our Sun Gold are doing ok but not a massive crop

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    1. Are you growing in pots? Any crop is good Robert.

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