First tomatoes

Yesterday we picked our first Faworyt beef tomatoes. We picked 3 lbs - one tom was 8oz. They are been growing in Mum's conservatory in grow bags sowed from seeds on 30 March. Looking at last year's diary we picked our first Big Boy tomatoes on 18th August having planted the first week of April, so very similar - despite this year being much warmer. The year before we had our first Big Boy tomato on 13 August (11 oz).

Faworyt beef tomatoes

We've grown Big Boy tomatoes for many years. They are excellent for cooking and soups as well as in salads. They provide much better flesh to skin & pip ratio than other varieties. However, they are an F1 hybrid and have been increasingly difficult to source seeds. So this year we tried the Faworyt variety.

They certainly germinated well and have grown luxuriously, perhaps a bit too much leaf which we've had to trim back quite a lot. (I know some people suggest cutting back nearly all the leaves anyway - "to prevent the leaves taking the goodness". But it's the leaves that create the tomatoes, especially the sweetness, via photosynthesis.)

Well for lunch we did the test - sliced tomatoes,with chopped chives and a splash of vinegar & olive oil - and I'd say the taste was pretty good. Nice and sweet. But I think there were a lot of pips, not so much flesh as the Big Boys.

Faworyt tomatoes in growbags in the conservatory.

In the big greenhouse I've grown Alicantes and a few tomatoes that appeared in the compost so could be anything. We've been picking and eating for a week or so and they are pretty good. Very sweet just to eat as they are but will do soup too.

Alicante toms ripening on the kitchen windowsill.

Super-squashes!

Squashes and a marrow from Froggarts Cottage Garden

Last year I saved seeds from an enormous shop-bought butternut squash and sowed them this spring. All the seeds germinated and have thrived in the veg bed after planting out.

The plants are enormous and have produced a good collection of fruit. Some are rugby-ball sized, weighing 5 - 6 lbs, yellow with green stripes, or pale green with dark green stripes. Not a butternut squash to be seen!

The commercial growers (in Italy or South Africa - can't remember) obviously used F1 seeds which are hybrids. The seeds are produced by carefully cross-pollinating two or more different varieties to produce squashes with desirable qualities. The seeds from the off-spring of F1 plants are rarely like their parents. In our case they had obviously used a variety of squash bred for SIZE!

Here's a bit about F1 hybrid seeds and plants >>

Anyway our super-squashes are fairly tasty - yellow rather than orange-fleshed like a proper butternut squash - and have been roasted and made into soup. The small fruits can be used like courgettes - fried, baked, stuffed whatever.