Anyone with an allotment?

The crimson crush/blush/plum varieties are all extremely blight resistant. If you have suffered with blight before then you can grow these and wont suffer. It's looking like two of my tomato plants are starting to get blight. Fruit getting that slightly off yellow colour when ripening.

Bloke from my allotment reckons you should water the ground with some dilute jeyes fluid if you've had blight there.

‘Slugpellet Steve’ on our site was a big believer in Jeyes fluid for blight apparently. Came up in conversations last year with another neighbour. By the time he left his plot was practically glowing from the amount of chemicals he was throwing around so I’m not sure it’s something I’d do on a whim :/
Touch wood we’ve escaped unscathed this year..
Looking at San marzano varieties for next year as supposedly hard as nails/blight resistant and great for passata making.

To be fair, Doug is an allotment legend and certainly doesn't use many chemicals at all. He wasn't really suggesting I do it, he just mentioned it as a 'some people do this'. It probably does work, but then you've got jeyes fluid in your soil and a damaged microbiome.

Will have a look at the san marzano. I also like to keep a few tomato plants at home and they ususally avoid blight much more than ones at the allotment.

I think however scorched your earth, you remain highly susceptible to infection by wind , insects etc carrying it from other infected plants around the same allotment site or beyond, when environmental conditions favour the disease, so better to choose varieties with care

Was ordering some other bits last night and ended up getting these for next season. One for salads and one for passata. Both supposedly pretty resilient and prolific.

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I think however scorched your earth, you remain highly susceptible to infection by wind , insects etc carrying it from other infected plants around the same allotment site or beyond, when environmental conditions favour the disease, so better to choose varieties with care

Agreed, but if it's in your soil this year you'll be getting it in any potatoes/tomatoes next year.

Anyway to the original question ‘are they safe to eat’, I don’t think they would be harmful and can’t find any evidence that the fungus has any toxicity in humans , but they might just taste bad I guess. I have some of my Marmande fruits with this yellow tinge at the top which I think is caused by infection, but I’ll probably just throw them all in some ketchup and not worry about it. When I see it in the small cherry ones like on the one pictures I just bin them. Also Monty Don says it’s fine to eat fruit from infected plants as long as the fruit don’t look like they are infected.

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Any idea what’s happening here

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🐛

I have had slug damage in larger toms that looks similar, put down extra pellets around my plants and have not seen further damage

I put 4 kg of allotment tomatoes into a large brimming saucepan and a slow cooker this morning with some onion celery, vinegar , sugar and spices to make ketchup , simmered for 10 hours to reduce by half , nice thick consistency, then sieved to get seeds and skins out, and am left with a really runny sauce…will need to boil it down for another few hours tomorrow to get it thick enough to be called ketchup, wife is crying due to oversensitivity to house smelling and kitchen being a bomb site. Might get a ketchup bottle amount out of it at the end, and a large electricity bill.

Could you use a little bit of pectin to help firm it up?

I make something similar by frying the tomatoes in a saucepan with a little butter, and s n p. Put it in the blender and you’ve got a nice sauce. When it cools it seems to firm up slightly on its own.

Potting up runners.

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3.5kg from my last row of spuds

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Good stuff, Desiree?

Also interested to find out how @user116219 ‘s tomato sauce situation has resolved.

Sarpo Mira, might do 2 x rows next year as they're a good bet.

Sauce has had a day of rest, don’t have pectin available otherwise would be tempted , but am planning on splitting it over the widest pans I have and boiling down to reduce bt another 30% or so and then bottle it up. Have to wait for my wife to be shut away in a meeting for a couple of hours and then boil it up without her knowing, to avoid her fertilising the garden with it , obviously will report on my success or otherwise of my stealth ketchup!

I think we’ve made about 5 litres of passata so far :)

This is where a gas BBQ is useful.

Ok job done, started out runny, 2 hours later was holding its shape well after running spoon through, so have put all in sterile jars. Did not plan jar sizes well. Wife now not talking to me but the ketchup tastes amazing.

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Sarpo Mira

Of course, great choice. extremely blight resistant. I've done them the past 3 (maybe 4) years. Currently got 2 rows and about 6 pots with them in. A great tasting maincrop as well.

Anyway moving on, I have been trying to grow aubergines in plastic covered trug in sunny spot in sheltered back garden and have got quite a few decent ones so far, would like to think about putting them at allotment next year to allow larger number of plants but not sure how successful that would be without cover, have not seen anyone else at the site growing them which might tell me what I need to know , but interested if anyone has had a go and can comment on success or failure of growing then in more exposed conditions

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Wife now not talking to me but the ketchup tastes amazing.

Maybe she'll soften when she tastes it?

Anyone got any advice about what to do about a big tree on the opposite plot that blocks our light? The plot holder is known as ‘Santa’ cos he only visits once a year so there’s zero chance of him taking care of it and it’s realistically reached a point where it needs a pro to deal with it. It’s a sycamore so dense crown and of no use to anyone, it’s reached a point where over the next couple of years it’ll get really big. As an ex-tree surgeon I could bang it in an hour but as the allotment officer knows I used to work in the industry and it mostly affects us it’ll be pretty obvious it was me and obviously it’s not mine to deal with.
Plot holder is a bit older so even if he did care about it he wouldn’t be able to deal with it.
In 3 years I think I’ve only met him twice.
Allotment officer is fairly useless, she’s more interested in busy-bodying people who’ve gone an inch over their boundary than dealing with the real issues on site. She didn’t bother turning up for inspection day yesterday, bit rude as my partner and at least a dozen others had taken the morning off to see her in person to address various issues.

The tree means we get 2-3hrs less sunlight in the afternoon than the neighbouring plot.