Vegetables

Every year more and more people buy a few tomato plants at their local garden centre, bring them home, plant them and look after them all summer long – yet it is about 3 to 3½ months before they get a single fruit. Why go to all that bother – watering, feeding and side-shooting – you might wonder, when you could just pop into a shop and buy what you need? Well, if you taste a home-grown tomato fully ripened on the plant you’ll understand why: the flavour is sweet and intense and worth every minute of the hard work. Commercial growers need to pick off their tomatoes green or semi-green to allow for distribution and shelf life, so the fruit ripens in the box and never quite develops that sun-ripened flavour.