Cucumbers and Tomatoes on the Way !

 We started picking the very first of our lovely little 'Tamra' cucumbers just a few days ago, and have been looking at our tomato plants every day to see when the first one would begin to ripen . . .

Well, today Dave spotted the first signs of ripening on one of the plants, and here it is, our first tomato of 2024 !

Once again, it is the variety 'Stupice' (apparently pronounced 'Stoopeachkay') and, as the Real Seeds website says, "This fantastic 1954 variety from Eastern Europe is the earliest of all our vine tomatoes."  Every year that we have grown it, it has been the first to ripen, so we go on growing it . . .

. . . along with 26 other varieties, a total of 63 plants!  Red ones, yellow ones, orange ones and pink ones.  Different shapes, too – big 'oxhearts' – deeply ribbed ones – small translucent yellow ones – long 'plum' tomatoes, small pear-shaped ones and some really gigantic (and sometimes quite ugly) ones, as well as your more 'normal' round ones, large and small.  Here they all are:
  https://www.blackberrylane.co.uk/PDFs/Tomatoes2024.pdf

And we grow them all because they taste as tomatoes should taste* – really delicious, with that wonderful fresh tangy flavour.  We can hardly wait until we are back to eating our own home-grown tomatoes again, very soon.

And you can join us!  They will be on the pricelist on our website soon.

* John Denver wrote a song about them!  Here's a YouTube link to him singing it . . .