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Tomatoes in the conservatory
Dec. 20th, 2020 07:47 amOur house has a lean-to conservatory running alongside the kitchen. It's used as a untility room, bike shed and gardening shed. It is massively untidy and also unfortunately in need of a good clean (maybe next summer).
So this year I made some half-hearted attempts to grow food plants, starting at the tail end of the summer, which as any gardener will tell you is exactly the wrong time to start. I grew some squashes from seed and I bought a couple of past their best cherry tomato seedlings from Scotsdales for 50p each. The squash plants thrived in the traditional beanstalk manner, and sprawled all over the flowerbeds, happily producing yellow flowers (some of which I did indeed manage to cook with). They also produced a number of little yellow fruits, but these never got enough sun to grow and as autumn brought deluge after deluge the slugs got them one by one.
The tomato plants, on the other hand, grew and grew. I staked them and when they were about three feet high I started to cut the tops off the stems. They grew tiny starlike yellow flowers and then tiny green fruits. When the deluges were followed by high winds I moved them into the conservatory, sitting them on top of the washing machine and the dryer, which is coincidentally the sunniest corner. Ever since then they have been producing tiny cherry tomatoes, mostly no more than 1 cm in diameter, which I gather in handfuls and put on the kitchen window sill to ripen.
I am charmed that the conservatory is fulfilling its destiny in housing a tangle of green vines, and every time I brush past the (currently rampant) vegetation I get a breath of that glorious herby green tomato smell.
So this year I made some half-hearted attempts to grow food plants, starting at the tail end of the summer, which as any gardener will tell you is exactly the wrong time to start. I grew some squashes from seed and I bought a couple of past their best cherry tomato seedlings from Scotsdales for 50p each. The squash plants thrived in the traditional beanstalk manner, and sprawled all over the flowerbeds, happily producing yellow flowers (some of which I did indeed manage to cook with). They also produced a number of little yellow fruits, but these never got enough sun to grow and as autumn brought deluge after deluge the slugs got them one by one.
The tomato plants, on the other hand, grew and grew. I staked them and when they were about three feet high I started to cut the tops off the stems. They grew tiny starlike yellow flowers and then tiny green fruits. When the deluges were followed by high winds I moved them into the conservatory, sitting them on top of the washing machine and the dryer, which is coincidentally the sunniest corner. Ever since then they have been producing tiny cherry tomatoes, mostly no more than 1 cm in diameter, which I gather in handfuls and put on the kitchen window sill to ripen.
I am charmed that the conservatory is fulfilling its destiny in housing a tangle of green vines, and every time I brush past the (currently rampant) vegetation I get a breath of that glorious herby green tomato smell.
