Green, but soon red

I long for the countryside. That's where I get my calm and tranquillity - from being able to come and find a spot of green.

- Emilia Clarke -

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I agree with Emilia Ckarke, finding green places is a beautiful thing, but what's not beautiful is green tomatoes - I like mine red, flavoursome and off my own tomato vines! Yes, I know there's tomatoes that are eaten green but I'm somewhat of a traditionalist and red ones are the way to go for me.

After years of eating, or refusing to eat, flavourless tomatoes from the supermarket, or having to range far and wide to farmers markets in the hope of finding decent-tasting tomatoes I decided to grow my own and to date have had a couple of excellent crops and some fine tasting tomatoes. The process of growing them has been fun too and made the eating part so much more enjoyable than eating bought ones.

To grow truly great tomatoes copious amounts of sunlight is needed, something we've not had a great deal of this spring; it's been more like winter, a really wet winter-in-spring. It's annoyed me for many reasons including the fact my tomatoes need those golden rays of sunshine to help make them awesome. What's great though, is that there are so many tomatoes coming along in this crop that I think I'll be neck-deep in tomatoes this year! (Sun permitting.)

I've got three different varieties including, Tommytoe, Cherry Roma and Allan's Early Red, all of which are large tomatoes known for their strong flavours. These are the sort of tomatoes one can pick off the vine and eat like an apple; they're that good.

I've only got two of the three varieties pictured here as the Cherry Roma's are still quite small - I'm intending to do another post once they all ripen up a little more and might call that post, red, but soon eaten, because at that stage I'll be pretty keen to taste the rewards of my toil and effort.

What's really cool is watching the plants move through their various stages hence my inclusion of a few pictures of the flowers which, in time, form into tomatoes.

There's something pretty special about watching a plant come out of the ground and moves through it's growth-phase before it delivers it's produce. Of course, playing an active role in that process makes eating them so much better than produce bought from the supermarket; they're far more tasty also as they're ripened on the vine rather than being picked early, or ripening on a sprig of vine that's been cut off the main vine whilst the tomatoes are still green. It's when they're connected to the plant all the way to being ripe and ready where the flavour comes from.

I'm really pleased with my tomatoes this year. They're in great abundance, are looking incredibly healthy and, if the sunshine plays along, I think they'll taste magnificent. I do this for myself, growing things, although I'll be honest and say it also makes me happy and proud to offer my produce to others, sometimes bartered for other goods or just as gifts, and to hear how great a job I've done. It's rewarding...but not as rewarding as eating the produce myself!