You cannot beat the taste of home grown tomatoes

[okra]

We have been growing tomatoes for 20 odd years and every year we cannot wait for our crop to start producing so we can stop buying those supermarket ones. Luckily her in Cyprus we are now starting to get our first ones

http://cyprusgardener.blogspot.com/2011 ... grown.html

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[Green Aura]

Oh now look what you've gone and done okra - you'll get Odsox started! (Just joking, Tony )

Home grown tomatoes are one of the simplest and finest pleasures in the world!

I don't know if you've ever had mozarella, tomatoes, basil and olive oil in a restaurant? Completely tasteless - until you do it at home with freshly picked tomatoes and basil, then you know exactly why it's so popular. Well I do anyway

[Odsox]

Oh now look what you've gone and done okra - you'll get Odsox started!

Moi ?
Surely not.

I think you may be preaching to the converted a bit Okra, although I agree wholeheartedly with you.
One thing though, if you like home grown so much, why don't you grow them all year round ?
If I can do it in soggy chilly Ireland, I'm sure it would be a doddle in Cyprus.

[JulieSherris]

Oh now look what you've gone and done okra - you'll get Odsox started!

Moi ?
Surely not.

I think you may be preaching to the converted a bit Okra, although I agree wholeheartedly with you.
One thing though, if you like home grown so much, why don't you grow them all year round ?
If I can do it in soggy chilly Ireland, I'm sure it would be a doddle in Cyprus.

Showoff.

[Odsox]

Oh now look what you've gone and done okra - you'll get Odsox started!

Moi ?
Surely not.

I think you may be preaching to the converted a bit Okra, although I agree wholeheartedly with you.
One thing though, if you like home grown so much, why don't you grow them all year round ?
If I can do it in soggy chilly Ireland, I'm sure it would be a doddle in Cyprus.

Showoff.

Jealous ?

[JulieSherris]

Abso-bloody-lutely!!!

Although..... a HUGE roll of polytunnel plastic was delivered yesterday & hubby has built the 2 new wood frames for my new polyhouses - so that will make 3 in total - ok, they are only 18 ft long by 6 ft wide, but with 3 I can still do rotations etc... so there!

But you still get more warm & sun down there anyways, so you'll still do better....

[okra]

Oh now look what you've gone and done okra - you'll get Odsox started!

Moi ?
Surely not.

I think you may be preaching to the converted a bit Okra, although I agree wholeheartedly with you.
One thing though, if you like home grown so much, why don't you grow them all year round ?
If I can do it in soggy chilly Ireland, I'm sure it would be a doddle in Cyprus.

You are right we are in the process of building a poly tunnel to allow us to grow tomatoes and maybe even peppers through winter

[pelmetman]

For those of us who can only grow them in season ...............Last year we had a glut as you do so froze a load.....but, instead of blanching them to get the skins of we just froze them as they were

They were great, we just chucked a handful in to all sorts of dishes .....We'll not bother skinning them again

Just coming to the end of our frozen supply now

[JulieSherris]

For those of us who can only grow them in season ...............Last year we had a glut as you do so froze a load.....but, instead of blanching them to get the skins of we just froze them as they were

They were great, we just chucked a handful in to all sorts of dishes .....We'll not bother skinning them again

Just coming to the end of our frozen supply now

*Perk*!! Froze them??
Which has led me to the thoughts: Why can't you get frozen tommies in the shops? Why do they Can them but not freeze them?

OK, Dave/Sue - did you freeze them whole, or chop them? Would they do well sliced/quartered?

I use a lot of tomatoes in cooking, and I can honestly say that after all these years, I've never once thought of freezing them - what a clutz!!

[pelmetman]

Hi Julie,

We just freeze them whole and the amazing thing is you don't have to freeze them individually to stop them all sticking together. Just pop them into bags and freeze away then you can just take out how many you want at a time.

Sue Dave

[greenorelse]

Hi Julie,

We just freeze them whole and the amazing thing is you don't have to freeze them individually to stop them all sticking together. Just pop them into bags and freeze away then you can just take out how many you want at a time.

Sue Dave

Yes, we did that with our glut last year. It works, though I'm not sure how long they keep (not long in our case...).

[gregorach]

*Perk*!! Froze them??
Which has led me to the thoughts: Why can't you get frozen tommies in the shops? Why do they Can them but not freeze them?

I'm pretty sure that canned produce is way cheaper to produce and handle throughout the entire supply chain. It takes a heck of a lot of power to run a freezer plant, keep acres of warehouses at -40, keep everything frozen in transport, and run the freezers in the shops. (Especially those stupid open display freezers. There ought to be a law against those.) And there's really not that much difference between canned and fresh for tomatoes, unlike some other products.

[Odsox]

I agree wholeheartedly, Dunc, we bottle loads of them. Easy to do and way more convenient to just open a jar and dump it in whatever.
We have frozen them when we run out of jam jars, and I can't honestly say there is any difference in taste, just a lot cheaper to store jars on a larder shelf.

[JulieSherris]

Ahhh, right. I get it now!

OK, so in MY house, I'd be better off freezing them then, because cupboard space is SO short. If I had enough storage space for jars & cans maybe I'd rethink the bottling thing - but popping them into a bag & into the freezer... well that's a whole new story.

Thanks Guys! xx

[pelmetman]

[quote="SusieGee" I usually put a few sprigs of basil/corriander or parsley in with each bag too [/quote]

Thats a good idea ..........will try that this year