The context: this evening I picked another three and a quarter kilos of tomatoes. (Which means I'm currently at about 15kg so far this year, not counting the ones the slugs got to before I did, which assuming a base price of £6/kg for tomatoes I'll actually enjoy eating is... definitely something).
I've put ~2kg of beefsteak tomatoes straight into a pan to turn into passata (along with some overripe plum and cherry tomatoes). The question I am pondering, though, is: do I, next year, want to grow enough tomatoes that I can actually make... enough of our own passata that we just don't buy any? If so, I need to work out how many jars we go through a year (which Can Be Done courtesy of supermarket receipts), and also I need to seriously rejig my idea of what all else I'll be growing because that's a lot of tomatoes, but I'm having Difficulty reconciling myself to any plausible middle ground...
... and also, well, the list of possible seeds to get next year, just for tomatoes, looks like this:
This year I had ~20 plants -- 10ish beefsteak, Feo de Rio Gordo; 5ish Chadwick Cherry; 5ish Purple Ukraine plum -- and while I started out a little dubious about the Chadwick Cherry and the Purple Ukraine the flavour of both has definitely grown on me over the course of the season, even as I am slightly disappointed in the actual colour the Purple Ukraine end up.
That's one full outside bed and one full greenhouse bed and honestly they're both rather overcrowded and could have done with more space, and also they are very much still cropping, and at some point in the next three-or-so months I need to actually make some decisions to get next year's lot started...
I've put ~2kg of beefsteak tomatoes straight into a pan to turn into passata (along with some overripe plum and cherry tomatoes). The question I am pondering, though, is: do I, next year, want to grow enough tomatoes that I can actually make... enough of our own passata that we just don't buy any? If so, I need to work out how many jars we go through a year (which Can Be Done courtesy of supermarket receipts), and also I need to seriously rejig my idea of what all else I'll be growing because that's a lot of tomatoes, but I'm having Difficulty reconciling myself to any plausible middle ground...
... and also, well, the list of possible seeds to get next year, just for tomatoes, looks like this:
TOMATOES
? bush Aurora (sauce)
- Blue Fire
? Stupice
? Galina
? 'Gardener's Delight'
? Ferad
? Chocolate Cherry
? Orange Banana
? Peche Vilmorin
? Costoluto Fiorentino
- Green Zebra
? De Colgar
This year I had ~20 plants -- 10ish beefsteak, Feo de Rio Gordo; 5ish Chadwick Cherry; 5ish Purple Ukraine plum -- and while I started out a little dubious about the Chadwick Cherry and the Purple Ukraine the flavour of both has definitely grown on me over the course of the season, even as I am slightly disappointed in the actual colour the Purple Ukraine end up.
That's one full outside bed and one full greenhouse bed and honestly they're both rather overcrowded and could have done with more space, and also they are very much still cropping, and at some point in the next three-or-so months I need to actually make some decisions to get next year's lot started...