The great 2011 canon ball (tomato) harvest - Part 1

Finally a bit of gardening, well, not much in the way of gardening really, more harvesting which is the greatest benefit of gardening, aside cooing at pretty flowers that is. Anyway, from the indoor allotment, windowsill tomatoes, on the inside of the windowsills of course, this is the frozen northern isles after all. It may be summer out there, but today I've got a wooly jumper on, its a tad chilly. The bush tomatoes however are nice and cosy and have gone crazy 'Red Alert' and 'Tumbling Tom' have done really well. 'Latah' did really early tomatoes as LBF promised, but I think they got blight - well, half an hour in a book tells me they'd had blight, I think. And, it appears to be passing itself around the others too - pesky pesky this indoor growing malarkay. The indeterminate tomatoes have not done well, me and them are not friends, maybe in a tunnel but for indoor allotmenteering, it just doesn't work. Chalk that one upto experience, I thought this last year, I think it this year, therefore I think I don't try that again. Remind me I said that, next year, when I convince myself to give it another go. But, by then the tunnel WILL be up!

I came home from holiday to find many a ripe tomato, I tend to pick them into a big box and freeze them straight away, for the pasta sauces the cellist loves so much. No one here much likes tomatoes except me and Mr Flowers, but I can't eat too many of them so the rest are frozen for sauce making. Picked, put in a box and frozen, to join the indoor basil in the big chest freezer, ready for action at some later pasta emergency requiring home made sauce. And in this house we have many an emergency in that department I can tell you!

Don't they look just gorgeous, there they are, growing away, enjoying the lovely view out of the window. I've not done much except give them water, they had a handful of slow release organic fertiliser when I put them into their window boxes in March/April. I'm a very lazy gardener or very green, I can't decide which.

 From the vine to the freezer in less than ten minutes, now that is freshly frozen!

Thus far we've a couple of kilos in there for freezing, which is brilliant. The other bush tomato plants I got later on from a freebie are now coming into flower, so we'll have another crop again after these are exhausted. Never had blight before, (the tomatoes NOT me I hasten to add) but it doesn't seem to bother the fruiting, however the tomatoes downstairs don't have it, and the upstairs ones do (its the better growing space) so I don't know if I'll move the ones coming along upstairs after these have finished or not? Anyone know much about blight?

Yay to a harvest of shiny red canon balls! That will keep the cellist very happy indeed. That girl sure does like her pasta, and demands only the best pasta sauce, just as well we've more coming along as well then isn't there? The indoor allotment basil has been brilliant too, its on its 10th harvest and I've a freezer load of that too. Hopefully the cellist won't sack me too soon, by the time she returns from her holiday at her dads, en france, we should have a plentiful stash of canon balls and basil for her sauces. Phew, I'd hate to be sacked, I rather like being her mother.