And finally the Italian beefsteak tomatoes – Variety: Costoluto Genovese have gone red. They have been in the greenhouse and due to the stems getting so heavy they fell over so they have now all been harvested.

Update on the Greenhouse Growbag watering system

In May, I posted – My Tomato Growing Setup about my greenhouse growbag watering tanks and how I set them up to grow my tomatoes.

These have been very successful in the heat of the summer as you can fill up the tank and not have to fill it up again for approx 2 days. The tomato-rite feed mix also got poured weekly into the tanks after the plants had flowered.

Would you use the growbag water tanks again?

Yes I’ll definitely be using them again next year.

Will you be growing Italian beefsteak tomatoes again?

No, not in the growbag system. They were extremely large and sprawling plants and the canes didn’t support them well enough, as the stems snapped and fell over.

The Costoluto Genovese tomatoes are very wrinkly and quite mushy inside which I don’t like but this does make them great for making tomato sauce or soup. Next year I’d like to grow some smoother smaller varieties for salads.

Top Tip – How to make your tomatoes turn red.

What did you do with all your tomatoes?

We washed and cut the tomatoes into quarters, added chopped red onion, garlic and red sweet peppers (also grown at home) and hroasted in the oven for 35 mins at 200 degrees centigrade.

Then used the blender to blitz the roasted vegetables and put into Lakeland 1 Litre Soup bags for the freezer.

The tomatoes were roasted with skins on and blitzed. No sieves required here, skins and seeds went into the soup.

This tomato soup was quite thick so could be used for soup, or pasta sauces throughout the autumn.

The recipe I followed was: Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup by Fuss Free Flavours

How to Grow Tomatoes

• Sow: Mid March in pots in an unheated greenhouse.
• Potted on: Mid April into larger pots in the unheated greenhouse.
• Planted into the Growbag: 6 May planted into bottomless pots which sat on top of the growbag watering system in unheated greenhouse.
• Flowering: Mid June
• Harvest: Late August.

Other Reading on Tomatoes:

Part 1 📕 Tomatoes – Origin, Nutrition and Reasons to Grow.

Part 2 📗 Tomatoes – How to Sow Tomato Seeds with Short Sowing Video

Part 3 📘 Tomatoes – How to Choose a Tomato Variety to Grow

Part 4 📙 How to Pot On your Tomato Seedlings

💦 My Tomato Greenhouse setup with Growbag watering system– l’ll be using this again this year as it was so successful.

Top 3 Tips on Getting your Tomatoes to turn Red

🍅 And Finally… The Italian Job – Tomato Harvest – last year’s Italian tomato harvest.