Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Monday, August 27, 2007

Green tomatoes

Green tomatoesHey, there! I'm still on vacation and still working on my crop week posts! Thanks to global warming, our weather has been unusually mild, with nary a sunny day to greet us here in Seattle.

So my huge batch of tomatoes are still as unripe as can be. It's a little disconcerting - so far I've had a few semi-ripe ones that I eagerly plucked from the plant. And, by the way, my semi-ripe tomatoes taste one thousand times better than the grocery store tomatoes.

Oh, dear. Well, hopefully they won't all ripen while I'm on vacation. If they don't, I saw a great recipe in the New York Times last week for Green Tomato and Lemon Marmalade. So, if they don't shape up soon, they may be subjected to a boiling hot water bath and added to my jam collection.

Listen up tomatoes? Do you hear me? I'm going to eat you one way or another!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most of my tomatoes have ripened, but I still have about two dozen that are gre-eeen. Your recipe looks like a winner so I'm glad to have a backup plan. It seems that my green beans only produced one big batch and are done for the summer. Still watching my cukes and peppers grow though. Happy vacation!

Anonymous said...

This relish recipe looks very similar to one that I use. Usually I have trouble getting enough green tomatoes to make it. It would be a nice alternative, or addition, to your marmalade plan.

Oldnovice said...

My tomatoes have a bit of blight, but they ARE ripening. We had an unusual amount of rain this year, so the blight doesn't surprise me. I think they'll do better once the weather cools down, and I'm going to try and keep them producing long after you northern folks start making relish.

Theresa said...

A lot of my tomatoes are still green as well, and summer is pretty much over here now, in northern Alberta. The few ripe ones I did get were absolutely delicious though! I will have to give this recipe a try for the remaining slowpokes.

Anonymous said...

I'm in Seattle too, and I have to admit, I am horrified at how few ripe tomatoes we have had so far this year, namely ONE! We have one or two that are starting to turn red and a plant of golden tomatoes that have a few close to golden. But baby, my cherry and tiny pear tomatoes are not even close. Ai yi yi. I am holding out for them ripening during our normally fabulous September. But that recipe is definitely a great back up plan, thanks!

Anonymous said...

The tomato "Matina", an open-pollinated commercial potato-leaved variety from Germany, has had no problems ripening tomatoes for over a month now.

They are salad-type tomatoes about an inch-and-a-half to two inches in diameter, fairly uniform and round, crack-resistant, and blemish free. Not particularly sweet but reasonable taste and texture for an early. It is fairly prolific and has filled my fruit-and-vegetable hanging basket. We are eating tomatoes daily for about a month.

Performance has been superior to Stupice's poor performance last year.

Being potato leaved it is probably more resistant to blight than otherwise, and it seems to be somewhat resistant to systemic diseases such as verticillium.

Numerous other varieties, Gardner's Delight being the only other one ripening now, although Clint Eastwood's Roudy Red is red now (not quite as dead-ripe as I would like so I will give it a few more days), and Earl of Edgecomb is starting to ripen.

I like to grow plenty of dependable varieties that are easy to ripen, and a few of the sweeter varieties that ripen later. Hopefully the late ones will ripen before the rainy season and blight start.