Some harvests are big events in themselves. Each year, the firsts roll around again: first lettuce, first raspberry, and then there’s the first tomato.
For someone who hated tomatoes until she started growing them, I have become extraordinarily attached to my First Tomato Harvest of the year. Inevitably it’s the ‘Sungold‘ that reaches ripeness first, and it’s a perfect cultivar to start the months of Caprese salads and juicy beefsteak-sliced sandwiches.
Around about this time, as well as feeding my tomatoes well with comfrey tea and with the odd dash of milk, I also start to give them a little haircut. I remove the leaves immediately around the fruits to focus maximum sunlight on them and to encourage air to circulate, which lessens the risk of blight. I also stop my tomatoes, which is akin to sideshooting, if a little more terminal.
Stopping your tomatoes means cutting or pinching out the lead shoot from a cordon plant (bush, or indeterminate, tomatoes do this naturally). You should do this once your vine has produced five or six healthy trusses of fruit, although I normally limit the hefty beefsteak varieties to three or four trusses so I get bigger fruit which ripens quicker. The idea is to concentrate the plant’s energies into ripening a realistic amount of fruit in our growing season, rather than ending up with a huge harvest of miserable green tomatoes.
What was your first tomato harvest this year?
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Thursday
Like you, Sungold tomatoes. I love them so much, we acquired another greenhouse largely so we could increase the amount of Sungold we grow!
isabel
Now that’s dedication! Love it!
hillwards
Our first to crop were our Minibel tomatoes, grown outside in terracotta planters. The greenhouse crops were only a day or two behind: first the Sakura F1 cherry tomatoes ripening from the top of the long trusses of fruit, and then the smallest couple of Shirley tomatoes ripened, and yesterday we picked our first yellow Golden Sunrise. I love tomato season…
Susanne
Harvested my first two “Golden Currants” yesterday! They are especially dear to me as I have only two tomato plants on my balcony and as they are the first tomatoes I ever grew all the way from seed. The second is “Phantasia” F1, fruits still & stubbornly green… can’t wait for these, the basil’s been ready for them for quite a time!
landscapegardeneroxford
First sungold tomatoes outdoors, good crop finding skins a little though. Will try the tea and milk feed