Tuesday, November 10, 2009

last of the cucumbers and tomatoes

Last week I plucked the final Tall Telegraph greenhouse cucumbers. We had the last one tonight in a green salad. These had a sweeter, milder flavor than most of the others, perhaps simply because they weren't as large.

Tonight I picked what will probably be the final tomatoes. There are still plenty of greenies, but I don't think they're going to ripen on the vine. Some of the cherry and grape tomatoes were pretty good, though.



Cucumbers and tomatoes in mid-November! I guess that makes the greenhouse successful in extending my season a bit.

There would be a lot more if I hadn't had humidity and mold problems. I've probably been overwatering, and once the rains came the inside of the greenhouse was extremely humid. The massive amount of tomato foliage didn't help, and I began seeing mold. I did a lot of pruning and did what I could to dry things out, but I lost many pounds of tomatoes. Next year I need to prune aggressively, avoid overwatering, and figure out other ways to limit humidity. Between that and going to a permanent glazing I think I'll have pretty good results.

2 comments:

Jane S Poole said...

We have success with ripening green tomatoes by bringing them inside still attached to the vines. Once the vines are dried, I remove them and the tomatoes continue to ripen. And don't forget green tomato mincemeat.

Steve Poole said...

Yeah, I've done that before with some success, but it took a long time and a lot of space in the garage. I think I'll leave what remains alone until it looks like a freeze is coming.