Well, its all change on the huerto this week.

The tomato plants have finally be pulled up and replaced with more broad beans – I don’t think you can ever have too many really. 

The tomato plants were starting to look pretty bedraggled and as its cooling down on the mountain I don’t imagine there would be much more in the way of new fruit or ripening.  We’ve collected lots of green tomatoes though which should keep us going for a good while yet.  So that means I have lots of chutney making ahead of me.  Yippee – I love the whole palaver involved with preserving – the planning, saving of jars, cooking, collecting recipes, sterilizing, labelling, giving and eating.  It brings out my inner goddess, glutton and waste not want not personalities in one fowl swoop. 

Harvest Nov 2008

As well as my tried and tested imitation Branston pickle I’ll be making some spicy Indian chutney and some green tomato/green pepper combos.  It’ll be interesting to see how the different varieties work as we’ve grown a bigger variety of tomatoes this year.  From seed we’ve grown tow sorts each of plum and cherry tomatoes.  Note to self – must remember to record what varieties we plant!  And as plugs (bought from the ever helpful if a tad scary Snr Bitem at Tortosa market) the ever reliable ‘grande’, ‘normal’ and ‘rose’ (that’s big, ordinary and pink for storage).

Snr Bitem may be a tad secretive in giving out the actual variety of vegetables he’s selling but he is never short on quantity and quality.  During our first few years here we had repeated failures due to our reliance on British gardening books, timetables and varieties.  We now ensure we plant a core crop of most veggies, buying locally grown plugs, planted similarly to when and how the locals do things.  Plugs bought in the local markets are incredibly cheap.  During the summer I had a crazy shopping spree spending nearly ten euros on:

• 200 onions, 5 green Brussels sprouts, 5 red Brussels, 20 red cauliflower, 20 green cauli, 20 white cauli, 30 large cabbage, 30 small cabbage, 20 Cos lettuce, 20 nameless crinkly purple lettuce and more besides!  If this seems excessive remember we have hens who’ll eat any spare veggies, improving yolk flavour and reducing feed costs.

I can rely on the locally produced plug plants to be varieties which will cope with the drought, heat, wind and cold of our pretty varied weather ensuring I have successful crops of ‘staple’ veg all year.  Then we can be a bit more adventurous and ‘risky’ with the varieties grown from seed – things like sprouting broccoli, radish and beetroot which are not traditionally grown locally. 

This year we branched out in the chilli / pepper plot too.   Buying standard sweet bell peppers and the local favorite long green varieties as plugs we then planted serano, Hungarian hot was, Thai and more from seed.  So far all have done well, I’ve got bunches drying inside, more growing outside and many already eaten and / or pickled.

Chilli Peppers Nov 2008

So tomatos are out but the peppers and chilli plants are still going very strong.  I’ve planted a few of the more ‘exotic’ varieties grown from seed in very sheltered spots to see if I can get them to keep going as the perenials they truly are, but even those out in the ordinary beds are looking happy enough – usually they’re pretty leafless by this time of year.  The seasons they are a changing!