TOMATO FEVER

A tomato-growing frenzy hit my office this week. Colleagues who have never grown a single vegetable are joining the club.

Better get this replanted, staked, watered and fed

Instead of filling the world with more chocolate bars, some clever local school fundraisers are selling mature-for-this-time-of-year tomato plants.

One green-fingered woman was ahead of the game and filled her greenhouse with hundreds of seedlings, spurned from a tried-and-tested Italian cherry tomato seed.

Luckily for Coogee Public School, they have the right contacts. My TV station colleague Jane has been shipping into our office as many tomato plants as she can carry. By lunchtime she's all sold out.

I'm trying to get a wee competition up - see which person in TV-land can grow the best crop of tomatoes. I'll even offer these tomato growing tips I recorded last summer.



A gardening columnist recommended planting tomato seeds a few months back, in order to have a crop in time for Christmas. Well, my babies only hit the dirt a few weeks back so I doubt I'll make the deadline.

My own very young tomato seedlings, planted a few weeks ago in egg cartons

 However,  thanks to Coogee's very smart school fundraising scheme, we may just get there.

AUTUMN HARVEST

I've bragged about our backyard organic cherry tomato supply - now not looking so hot after a lot of rain, a drop in temperature, a lack of sun and perhaps under-nourished soil.

However, now that the tomato plants have calmed down, the aubergines and peppers are getting a chance.

I was amazed to return from a ten-day holiday to find a large aubergine/eggplant and several smaller neighbours, mostly on the same laden plant. One is looking very purple and ready for vegetarian moussaka.

Aubergine Feast

One Yellow Pepper

But only one pepper/capsicum has materialised from a handful of fairly large leafy pepper plants. Not sure what went wrong there - research required.

Overall though it's been very satisfying growing all this food from seed. Billie has been a fantastic little helper throughout.

I've been waiting patiently for this sole pepper to turn red, but today Billie and I noticed the garden fauna was not being quite so patient. An ant was nibbling away inside a hole presumably left by a worm.

So Billie did the honors and appeared to get great satisfaction from pulling the yellow capsicum off the plant.

I only wish she would show so much enthusiasm when it turns up on her dinner plate tonight.

Billie pretends to eat our freshly-harvested pepper

KUMARA AND CHERRY TOMATO SALAD with CREAMY NUTTY DRESSING

Tahini used to scare me a little, unless it was in the context of hommus. But lately I've discovered it's a fine partner to various condiments and can be the back-bone of many tasty salad dressings.

Don't worry about the 'creamy' - it's an extremely healthy dressing. One I encouraged Billie to repeatedly dip her sweet potato into.

This was the first dinner in a week that Billie left not a scrap. It might have had something to do with the fact I starved her all day - well, she had a small lunch and only blueberries for afternoon tea - but I think it's safe to say this was a Winner with a capital W.

It's also one of those Under-30-Minute-Meals - a crucial selling point.

ROAST SWEET POTATO SALAD WITH CHERRY TOMATOES AND CREAMY NUTTY DRESSING

Serves three




Two large kumara or sweet potatoes
olive oil
handful cherry tomatoes
handful fresh mint (optional)




Dressing:
1/2 lemon
1 Tablespoon honey (leave out if child under one year)
3 T yoghurt
3 T Tahini
1 T tamari (or soy sauce)
3 T peanut butter (optional)
1/2 teaspoon cumin






Preheat oven to medium hot - about 220 c. Cut up kumera - no need to peel -  into large bite sized chunks (mine were a little over-sized tonight so ignore pictures). Spread out on oven tray and rub generously with olive oil. Roast until browned and crispy - they don't take long at all. 


Meanwhile, combine dressing ingredients in jar and shake well, or mix in small bowl.


Chop mint and add to kumera and tomatoes in a platter dish or bowl. Stir dressing through and serve warm. 


FOR BABIES 6 MONTHS AND OLDER: Reserve a little sweet potato and puree/mash
BABIES 8 MONTHS AND OLDER: Mash some sweet potato with the dressing (leave out peanut butter if you're unsure, but current recommendations say it's fine) but please do omit the honey
BABIES/TODDLERS 10 MONTHS AND OLDER: Serve salad as is (without honey)
TODDLERS ONE YEAR AND OLDER: Serve salad as is (honey okay after one year)

IT'S RAINING CHERRY TOMATOES - TIPS AND TRICKS FOR GROWING ORGANIC

Since mid-February we've been harvesting cherry tomatoes, grown from seed

I can tell you a lot about what NOT to do when growing tomatoes. This summer I opted for the garden-by-feel method, learning from mistakes rather than researching 'correct' methods and following instructions.

Despite this list of stuff to do that I didn't, we are managing to pick approximately one punnet of cherry tomatoes every second day. That's about 15. That's more than two adults and a toddler  - who is not partial to tomatoes - can actually eat.

And we're sharing our fruits with the birds, worms and possums. I have not got around to covering the rambling plants with netting, so for every one I pick I leave one in the garden for the wildlife to finish nibbling. Some with worm holes we cut up and cook, but it's getting to the point where we have so many I'm just leaving them for the bugs. What comes around goes around, especially in the garden.

THINGS TO DO WHEN GROWING ORGANIC TOMATOES


1. While planting seeds in egg cartons is fabulous, be sure to transplant once seedlings are established - after a couple of weeks, when they are a few inches high and a bit leafy. Otherwise they will dry out and shrivel up and die


2. Transplant to little pots, rather than straight into the garden. Unless you have great soil and conditions, the seedlings don't seem to cope well in the big wide world until a little bigger


3. Fertilise every week or so with organic products - there's one commonly available made of seaweed, and another combining nitrogen and fish oil etc

4. After another couple of weeks, move seedlings to the big garden or a very big pot. Make sure you cluster the tomato plants together and keep well away from herbs, lettuce, spinach, aubergine, capsicum plants etc. Why? The tomato plants will grow very big and shade everything. I started off with salad greens and basil, and now I just have lots of tomatoes. Plus a few aubergine and pepper plants that were far enough away from the tomatoes to grab some sun.

5. Stake all the tomato plants immediately. Not when they get big. Use thick, strong and tall stakes and tie loosely with old panty hose, or socks if you don't wear the former. I waited until the plants were bending over backwards, and then used bamboo that was too thin and short. I wound up with a jungle and some of the plants pulling out of the ground as they bent over

6. Pick out the laterals early. What's a lateral? It's where the plant tries to grow in directions and places other than purely necessary. If you don't pick the lateral shoots out when they are new, you wind up with a rambling tomato plant that's very hard to stake because it's shooting off in all directions. Look for the shoots between two stems.


7. Fertilise after each transplant, and then every two weeks. 


8. Sun and water are obviously a tomato's best friend. However, I read this week that antioxidants are created when a plant is stressed, ie dry for a bit, so don't fret if you skip a day or go away for a weekend.


9. Cover plants with netting, perhaps pegging to couple of tall stakes - I'm not an expert on this as not done yet


10. If you opt not to net - a bit of a pain as harder to access - perhaps harvest tomatoes before fully ripe and leave in a sunny spot inside. I found when my tomato harvest began a few weeks back that surprisingly few were being eaten by 'pests'. Last week this changed, so I began picking them green-orange and ripening on the sunny kitchen windowsill. Then a neighbor said this makes for more acidic fruit. This week we've left a load to ripen on the plant as an experiment, and this morning I picked 15 red fruit unscathed by bugs and animals. Conversely, there were lots of green and yellow tomatoes sporting worm holes. So perhaps bugs are colour blind...

Lone pepper  after rest were shaded by tomato plants

Billie shows Melissa how to water the tomatoes