My Tiny PlotTeeny-Tiny Tomatoes
I don’t know about you but I’ve had hardly any Tomatoes this year. Most of mine are still green and sitting on the bush in the rain – booh! The only success I’ve had with outdoor Tomatoes this year was with my clutch of teeny-tiny Tomatoes, my Sweet Pea Currants.
I lovingly raised them from even teenier seed and planted them out in the sunny corner, under my Peach tree. Once they were in they began to romp away, and just as Coopette said they soon became ‘vigorous and sprawling’.
So much so that I had to deploy the Pea sticks to keep the plants and what seemed like millions, (okay thousands) of fruits off the ground. Soon the little pea-sized Tomatoes were ripening. The teeny-tiny trusses had 14 maybe 16 fruits on each. The top ones ripened first, while the middle ones were orange and the smaller ones on the end were deep green moving to pale green – very pretty visually.
And the taste? Well, the name says it all, Sweet! And they certainly were. Too tiny to slice they are really more like Tomato candy – just pop them in your mouth one by one, no salad required.
I’d definitely recommend growing them. They seem to do fine as an outdoor crop here in the UK and even though I did feed them with Tomato feed (when I remembered) I’m sure that their flavour would still be very good without. You will need to plan in some support to tame the plants once they get to their mid-Summer craziness otherwise you’ll have a lot of very dirty, very small Tomatoes. And nobody wants that.
Glad to see you had some success with tomatoes given the summer we’ve (not) had. I grow mine under glass. Not too impressed with Sungold; very poor fruiting. I’ve had a nice crop of Olivia though and it’s still fruiting. The fruits take a long time to ripen (lack of sunlight?) but, according to my six year-old niece, the arbiter of all tomato taste, are sweet and juicy. So, a definite for next year’s planting.
They sound wonderful and look very tiny! I shall make a note for next year. I have no idea what type of tomato plant we have, previous owner Mrs H planted them and there aren’t any labels. Apart from one Shirley which I planted in a pot and bought with us! So I need to do my homework before deciding what to plant.
I have had 1 red tomato out of 4 plants!!! Loads of fruit on the stems, all green. If I harvest the green tomatos to make your green tomato chutney, how long will they keep before I make the chutney?
Yvonne
cherry tomatoes were the only variety I grew this year and they’ve been fab. I grow tomatoes primarily for making green tomato chutney and have found it’s a much quicker process with ‘no chopping’ cherry tomatoes. This years crop has been brill and while we’ve had several kilos of ripe tomatoes from our plot (mine were a sprawling tangle too) I’ve made a head start on the chutney making with a friends plum tomatoes that were planted out too late to ever hope of going red..
From talking to other people, I don’t think many have had success this year with tomatoes. Mine are all green too so I have taken them off and they are snug and warm in an oven mitt (!) turning red. I only got fruit off my outdoor ones too, my large plastic greenhouse just turned into a slug hotel.
Those little tomatoes are cute!
Well we’ll had a bumper crop of tomatoes – probably the best since we moved here 12 years ago. I grew most of the tomatoes in our small greenhouse, in large pots standing on the the concrete floor. But we have more in pots outside – most of these have now got blight.
The very best have been the Italian paste tomatoes, a variety called Liguria, seed bought in a huge packet from a market stall in Italy about 6 years ago. They are huge! the largest weighed in at 400g.
Celia
My tomatoes have been good this year – several pounds off about 10 plants, I’d say, with more to come. I like the sound of the Sweet Pea Currants though. The tastiest I’ve grown are ‘Black Cherry’ followed by ‘Yellow Scotland’.
I think Monty Don said that if you strip all the leaves off the plant that encourages the tomatoes to ripen.
Mine are only now ripening in any number. I’m picking eight or nine at a time and they are delicious. Fingers crossed that the frosts hold off for a while. Those tiny tomatoes look wonderful!
J
I grew Sweet Pea Currant as well, after reading about them here in spring – and we were succesful too! We had only one plant, in the greenhouse (we live in Denmark). The three-year-old ate all of them very happily! I think the plant itself is beautiful, with filigree-like leaves and flowers. Next year I’ll try to get seeds and start them myself – any spares would be nice to give away.
My Cherriettes of Fire (surely a made up name!) were green for ages then over the last month have suddenly turned a gorgeous deep orange. I made the mistake of planting this bush tomato straight into the ground which makes picking the toms quite back-breaking! Will grow again, but in a tub next year!
Have you tried removing the leaves from the plant, I told my neighbour about this and now hers are all turning red. Can’t claim the expertise for this, it was on gardeners world, with Monty Don.
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