Tomatoes in the dark

Well this seems to be a major revelation, the tomato in the dark in the shed has easily out ripened the one on the vine, here's a three some

tomato test

So I decided to remove all of the tomatoes that were even slightly orange and put them in the shed. I modified banana boxes with corrugated cardboard to cover the large hole on the bottom and a lid to keep the light out. Arranged from greenest to ripest it should be easy to choose the ones to use first.

tomatoes roughly arranged by ripeness

The sweet 100 tomatoes are lovely to pick, hand fulls every couple of days and the new plant grown from a lateral is huge and covered in fruit and flowers as well.

sweet 100's

Some natural pest control, a wasp dealing to a white butterfly caterpillar on a spiky zucchini leaf

wasp with caterpillar

 A bee on the nice chive flowers

bee on chives

 and a shy cat

queen Hazel

I picked the last plums from the tree today, it was us or the birds, we won.
Plum jam is being made as as I post, it's looking wonderfully dark and deep.


The main job around the place is keeping it a bit moist, we are having a long and sunny summer!