Sunday, January 15, 2012

First tomato 5/365

First tomato 5/365 by *Jilltoo
First tomato 5/365, a photo by *Jilltoo on Flickr.

Homegrown tomatoes are the best! We have to grow them in a glasshouse here in southern New Zealand but it's worth the effort.
When you grow tomatoes in a glasshouse you should really change the soil each year to avoid the build up of disease. We usually buy a load of superdirt which is great stuff if you don't think of where it came from (I won't go into details here :-) )
To this I add some peat, dolomite lime and long term slow-release fertilizer granules. The problem every year is what to do with the soil you've removed, we tend to spread it round the garden as a mulch.
Strangely this year I've got many plants of plum/Italian style tomatoes when I didn't plant any of that type of seed. I suspect it was a contaminated pack of seeds. Just hope they taste okay. I guess I can always preserve them if they're not good for salads.
Although it's probably cheaper in the long run to buy tomatoes from the supermarket I'll keep growing them, the taste is unbeatable!

2 comments:

paulgrand said...

Big congrats, looks delicious! :-)

Distressing Delilah a.k.a. jenn said...

It looks beautiful! Lucky you!