WITH lots of summer sunshine, at last, tomatoes are ripening and producing a good crop, writes gardening columnist JACKIE WARBURTON.
HOT sunshine and warmer days trigger flowering and fruiting for tomatoes and extra tomatoes means a few extra for jars of pasta sauce for the winter.
Tomatoes are either a bush variety or a vine variety so choose the best for your space.
Vines need a good strong trellis to climb on and space for the bees to pollinate the flowers, the bush varieties are smaller and better salad varieties and grow in pots or small courtyard areas.
The varieties to grow are endless and depend on the space that gets at least five to six hours of sunlight each day.
It’s too late to plant out for this season, unless you have a lot of frost protection and warmth in autumn such as a glasshouse or a very protected spot.
If looking for tomato seeds for next year, a cooking tomato to source would be Beefsteak, Oxheart or Roma tomatoes and Jaune Flamme or cherry tomatoes for salads.
If you like what you taste now, try cutting a slice of tomato and washing under the tap in a strainer to remove any flesh from the seed.
Allow it to dry on a piece of paper towel for a few days indoors and then store in a jar or envelope with date, name and place in a cool indoor space until August or September, when they will be ready to sow.
Cut up the seeds on the paper towel and place lightly under soil and gently water in, keep and moist.
A fungal disease to look out for in the garden is the never-ending tomato blight and fusarium wilt. Keeping the plants dry and well ventilated with minimal overhead watering will help keep these diseases at bay.
If there are visual signs that the tomatoes look unwell, have discoloured leaves with brown blotches and don’t respond to watering, remove as many infected parts of the plant as quickly as possible.
Tomato plants infected from any fungal diseases will not recover long term and while the fruit is not affected by the diseases, it is still edible but it’s not advisable to store seed from an unwell plant. Fruit will rot quickly.
If early signs of blight are spotted, water in copper sulphate and lime around the plant. It could take a few weeks for tomatoes to take up the nutrients, but it’s worth a try.
SUMMER flowers are now putting on a show and one plant in particular is the coneflower (echinacea).
An ordinary small inconspicuous plant in the garden most of the year, but when it’s hot and sunny, the flowers really put on a show.
The flowers bloom through summer to late autumn (or when the frosts arrive). The colour range is pink, white and yellow and can grow from 60 centimetres to at least one metre tall.
A herbaceous plant in the daisy family, it is highly attractive to bees and pollinators.
Coneflowers like to be dead headed to produce more flowers on an upright, long stem. They are superb as a fresh or dried flower arrangement.
Echinacea also has medicinal properties as teas and tinctures made from roots, leaves and flowers to enhance immunity to colds.
It’s a rhizome and can be dug up after flowering and divided if needed in autumn, replanted in the garden or used in the kitchen. There are a few new varieties to look out for and they are suitable for rock gardens, pots and containers and look terrific when planted en masse. Sombrero Lemon, Hot Coral or Adobe are my favourites. Cut back all echinacea plants hard to the ground in winter.
Leave a Reply