Project 365 day 145: early tomatoes

The tomato plants I have grown from seed, sown in February, are still small and will not be producing fruit till well into the summer, but thanks to our nonagenarian neighbour C I have six large Cristal tomato plants in the greenhouse which have lots of flowers and a good number of small green tomatoes. They are the result of his overwintering experiment: he sowed a pack of seed in September, kept the plants in his conservatory, and found that despite low light levels the fruit did grow and ripen through the winter. He rooted side shoots to produce the next generation of plants to supply him into spring; I'm not sure how many generations of offspring have now been propagated, but I'm grateful that even in this late, chilly spring we have developing tomatoes unusually early in the year. I have removed a set of side shoots and potted the best of them to create more plants; we'll see whether they are ready any earlier than the ones I have grown from seed.

It has been dry for quite a lot of today, though very overcast and dull. I counted all the young plants in the greenhouse, hardening off on the deck and still in the house, and wrote a list for P, who has taken over planting since last spring, when I took over all of J's twenty four hour care. There will be a lot to plant over the next month, mostly things I would normally expect to be planting now; most of the vegetable plants been very slow growing this year. However, the potatoes and onions are looking good, we have lots of healthy looking brassicas ready to go, and I'm pleased that a reasonable number of my second sowing of courgettes have now germinated, after the frustrating failure of the first batch.