Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

With such a glut of Tomatoes coming from the Greenhouse at the moment and the  Buffalo Steak  variety fruits averaging just shy of a pound in weight each, the biggest so far just over the pound at 530 grams, I have decided it's that time of year again to start making Tomato Ketchup.  I really do need to do something as the outdoor plants haven't begun ripening yet but the  Yellow Pear  plants are ladened with little pear-shaped fruits and the two American Heritage variety Pink  Brandywine   plants both have a number of fruits on as well, see pictures below. It's a nice problem to have! My recipe for Tomato Ketchup is pretty standard but if you are interested it can be found below; Jamie Oliver I aint:  3.5kg tomatoes roughly chopped 1 onion roughly sliced and diced 1 head of garlic peeled and chopped/crushed  110g salt 1kg light brown soft sugar 600ml red wine vinegar 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 4/5 whole cloves Few turns of black pepper Little oil (of your choice) fo

I am currently enjoying a bit of a glut on the Tomato front, no bad thing, and find myself experimenting with a number of recipes; that said an oven baked Beefsteak Tomato is still one of my favourite guilty pleasures. The   Buffalo Steak Tomatoes  from the Greenhouse have been a roaring success, baked, fried, in a salad, on a burger or in a sandwich I have used them in multiple ways for breakfast, lunch and dinner recently and these will definitely be grown again in the future - absolutely brilliant. The  Gigantomo  variety are also cropping strongly with a number of large fruits on the plants I have allowed them to grow on. I have a couple of very large fruits on one plant I deliberately left only a few tomatoes on but no world record breaker.  The Tomato varieties I am growing outside on the veg patch following the disaster that was the Limoncito and Black Cherry seedlings failing on me are now of course the  Yellow Pear  and  Pink  Brandywine   and these are going well I am happy t