biggs682
Itching to get back on my bike's
- Location
- Northamptonshire
fresh of the vine and red
Tomatoes
- Thread starter dellzeqq
- Start date
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slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
Damn it man! Out with it Vernon. A malfunction of the CO2 dosing system....glass breaking from a high level....mutant killer toms on the rampage...
We need to know.
We need to know.
Bromptonaut
Rohan Man
- Location
- Bugbrooke UK
Another don't like 'em uncooked; more about texture than flavour. Will eat them to be polite or maybe smothered in pepper and balsamic vinegar.
But in a soup (the real thing not 'cream of') or as the sauce on beef or chicken they're wonderful.
But in a soup (the real thing not 'cream of') or as the sauce on beef or chicken they're wonderful.
Cubist
Still wavin'
- Location
- Ovver 'thill
My favourite are the ones my Mum grew in the greenhouse. Small, with really tough skins, but absolutely full of intense sweet flavour, a hint of background tartness.
I'm with Vernon on the Greek tomatoes though... a flavour you just cannot get anywhere other than in Greece. Absolute food of the Gods.
Favourite combination is a ploughmans with some cheddar strong enough to hurt your mouth, a handful of sweet cherry or vine tomatoes, and a big dollop of Branston Pickle. The combination of tomato and Branston is one of those combinations that shouldn't work, but in fact gives a truly intense result.
I'm with Vernon on the Greek tomatoes though... a flavour you just cannot get anywhere other than in Greece. Absolute food of the Gods.
Favourite combination is a ploughmans with some cheddar strong enough to hurt your mouth, a handful of sweet cherry or vine tomatoes, and a big dollop of Branston Pickle. The combination of tomato and Branston is one of those combinations that shouldn't work, but in fact gives a truly intense result.
growingvegetables
Guru
- Location
- Leeds
Ripe tomatoes fresh off a field, drizzle of olive oil, and good sprinkling of fresh basil? Heaven.
We just don't get fresh, ripe tomatoes off a field in Britain
Time to move back to more pleasurable climes ... if I could.
We just don't get fresh, ripe tomatoes off a field in Britain
Time to move back to more pleasurable climes ... if I could.
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
Tomato near death experience number one
I worked for the UK largest farming organisation the Co-Operative Wholesale Society during five consecutive summer vacations as a sixth former and as an undergraduate. The main summer crop was tomatoes grown under glass in two styles of greenhouse:
Modern dutch style with lots of headroom in the gullies and sufficiently tall enough to be able to drive cabless tractors in them with pallet forks attached at the rear to collect loaded pallets and deliver empty pallets and tomato boxes etc. The ventilation and watering was automated in these style gree houses.
Traditional style greenhouse of wood and brick construction with low gullies and poor ventilation. Entry and exit was through standard size glazed doors.
I'd reached the heady hieghts of tractor drive by the third summer and was allocated a poorly maintained Massey Ferguson with losts of slop in the linkages, leaking hydraulics and a dodgy, notchy yet sloppy gearbox.
Those who have not seen commercial tomato vines would be amazed at how long they are. Four to five metres being typical lengths with all but the last metre being trained to grow horizontally and the last metre trained at a near vertical angle wrapped around a synthetic near unbreakable vine. The green houses were thus filled with an organic/synthetic structure like a very coarse whale balleen that would allow birds to pass through almost unimpeded but would halt anything bigger than a pug.
One day while parked, having reversed the pallet forks into the slots into a fully loaded pallet, I was in the process of climbing out to count and record the number of full tomato boxes when my leg caught the gear lever and knocked the tractor into gear. The tractor lurched forwards and I was pitched out of the tractor and I was firmly enmeshed in the tomatoes and twine while the tractor continues moving forwards and towards me. The rear wheels brushed against my legs and i was breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn't been crushed when I realised that the next target was my head. As the wheel approached my head and I was resigned to dying, the front of the tractor hit a support post and stalled. Saved!
Not so fast!
The collision with the support post displaced the metal glass supports and over four hundred square feet of glass fell out, some of it in my general direction. The whole incident probably took seconds but the sounds of collisions crunches and shattering glass seemed to take an eternity followed by a long silence. I then heard voices from the far end of the greenhouse seeking volunteers to come down to my end to survey the scene/carnage and for quite a few minutes there were no takers with phrases like "He'll be cut to ribbons the poor ba5tard" and "I daren't go I can't stand the sight of blood"
Some one legged it and got a foreman who then waded in, found that I was alive and breathing but mute with shock, then cut me free from the twine, stood me up, brushed me down and searched for damage.
I had two small cuts on the palm of one hand and some nicks in the fabric of my clothing.
I was too stupid to accept the offer of a lift home and the rest of the day on full pay and insisted on staying to gather my wits and returned to work.
Tomato near death experience number two
I was reversing a trailer around one of the older style greenhouses when I had an autopilot malfunction. What should have been a clear route actually had some beehives on it that has been placed there a couple of weeks earlier and I'd forgotten about them. I knocked over two hives.
What happened next was an epic replay of a cartoon portryal of angree bees/wasps. I saw a huge angry cloud of agitated honey makers literally make a bee line for me. I jumped out of the tractor and ran along the green house heading for a door closely followed by the bees. I opened the door entered the green house and closed the door. Instantly realising that closing the door was actually slamming the door and the glass feel out giving the bees free access to me. I was a slow learner as I ran through two complete green houses slamming doors behind me until I gathered my wits and managed to close the last door trapping the gits in a green house.
Breathing a sigh of relief I walk away but could still hear buzzing. I spun around several times without spotting any bees until I realised that I had dozens trapped in my afro. No-one would come near me and we were at a loss as to what to do next. I was vulnerable as I was shirtless. One bright spark had the solution. He got me to stand still while he hosed my head down. It did the trick. A good five minute sousing and most of the bees had been flushed out. A brave sole then spent the next ten minutes picking out the remaining corpses and survivors.
Tomato near death experience number three
Poor maintenance of machinery was typical at the tomato nurseries and I nearly succumbed to the efforts of a diesel powered rotorvator to kill me aided and abetted by some bodged fixing points for overhead training wire anchor points for tomato vines.
Diesel rotorvators are powerful beasts with around a one metre cultivation width. They demand assertive operators capable of winning wrestling matches with their free spirited attempts to go anywhere but where you want them to especially when the ground has been baked dry and is stoney. This particular rotorvator was evil with a notchy gearbox and a heavy clutch whose lever was akin to the old style rod brake lever on a bike .i.e. it was vertically below the handle. The other 'brake lever' was the throttle.
While reversing the rotorvator towards a gable end of one of the older style greenhouses I stumbled and fell backwards. The rotovator neatly caught my wrists between the bars and the levers and continued moving backwards and before I could extricate myself, the bars and levers punched through the class trapping my wrists against the wooden uprights. So far so good. No injuries, the engine will stall. Wrong! I could kick the gear lever into neutral. Wrong! It continued pushing backwards and because the wood wouldn't yield, the rotorvator handle s started to slide up the supports lifting me slowly onto a bluntish wooden stake which lodged between my shoulder blades I was on tiptoe and at the point of the stake breaking my skin when the engine finally stalled. Iwas no longer in a position where i could get a purchase on anything to lever myself free. I was also literally at the point of piercing my rib cage.
It took ten minutes of hollering before someone heard me, came to find out what the cause of the noise was, retreated to get the rest of the crew, reappeared with the rest of the crew, had a good laugh at my expense then pulled the rotorvator clear.
Looking back at my own incidents and that of fellow workers - one drove his tractor through the low end of a traditional green house and was pinned against the steering wheel, another looped his tractor - I just wonder how many of the incidents were logged. I count myself lucky that the machinery related accidents ended with very minor injuries but I suspect that many of the agricultural fatalities of the late seventies and early eighties were down to poor maintenance.
I can laugh about my misfortunes because I got away with it. I really believe that I have a guardian angel because I've used up a lot more than nine lives which rules me out of ever being a cat in a previous existence.
I worked for the UK largest farming organisation the Co-Operative Wholesale Society during five consecutive summer vacations as a sixth former and as an undergraduate. The main summer crop was tomatoes grown under glass in two styles of greenhouse:
Modern dutch style with lots of headroom in the gullies and sufficiently tall enough to be able to drive cabless tractors in them with pallet forks attached at the rear to collect loaded pallets and deliver empty pallets and tomato boxes etc. The ventilation and watering was automated in these style gree houses.
Traditional style greenhouse of wood and brick construction with low gullies and poor ventilation. Entry and exit was through standard size glazed doors.
I'd reached the heady hieghts of tractor drive by the third summer and was allocated a poorly maintained Massey Ferguson with losts of slop in the linkages, leaking hydraulics and a dodgy, notchy yet sloppy gearbox.
Those who have not seen commercial tomato vines would be amazed at how long they are. Four to five metres being typical lengths with all but the last metre being trained to grow horizontally and the last metre trained at a near vertical angle wrapped around a synthetic near unbreakable vine. The green houses were thus filled with an organic/synthetic structure like a very coarse whale balleen that would allow birds to pass through almost unimpeded but would halt anything bigger than a pug.
One day while parked, having reversed the pallet forks into the slots into a fully loaded pallet, I was in the process of climbing out to count and record the number of full tomato boxes when my leg caught the gear lever and knocked the tractor into gear. The tractor lurched forwards and I was pitched out of the tractor and I was firmly enmeshed in the tomatoes and twine while the tractor continues moving forwards and towards me. The rear wheels brushed against my legs and i was breathing a sigh of relief that they hadn't been crushed when I realised that the next target was my head. As the wheel approached my head and I was resigned to dying, the front of the tractor hit a support post and stalled. Saved!
Not so fast!
The collision with the support post displaced the metal glass supports and over four hundred square feet of glass fell out, some of it in my general direction. The whole incident probably took seconds but the sounds of collisions crunches and shattering glass seemed to take an eternity followed by a long silence. I then heard voices from the far end of the greenhouse seeking volunteers to come down to my end to survey the scene/carnage and for quite a few minutes there were no takers with phrases like "He'll be cut to ribbons the poor ba5tard" and "I daren't go I can't stand the sight of blood"
Some one legged it and got a foreman who then waded in, found that I was alive and breathing but mute with shock, then cut me free from the twine, stood me up, brushed me down and searched for damage.
I had two small cuts on the palm of one hand and some nicks in the fabric of my clothing.
I was too stupid to accept the offer of a lift home and the rest of the day on full pay and insisted on staying to gather my wits and returned to work.
Tomato near death experience number two
I was reversing a trailer around one of the older style greenhouses when I had an autopilot malfunction. What should have been a clear route actually had some beehives on it that has been placed there a couple of weeks earlier and I'd forgotten about them. I knocked over two hives.
What happened next was an epic replay of a cartoon portryal of angree bees/wasps. I saw a huge angry cloud of agitated honey makers literally make a bee line for me. I jumped out of the tractor and ran along the green house heading for a door closely followed by the bees. I opened the door entered the green house and closed the door. Instantly realising that closing the door was actually slamming the door and the glass feel out giving the bees free access to me. I was a slow learner as I ran through two complete green houses slamming doors behind me until I gathered my wits and managed to close the last door trapping the gits in a green house.
Breathing a sigh of relief I walk away but could still hear buzzing. I spun around several times without spotting any bees until I realised that I had dozens trapped in my afro. No-one would come near me and we were at a loss as to what to do next. I was vulnerable as I was shirtless. One bright spark had the solution. He got me to stand still while he hosed my head down. It did the trick. A good five minute sousing and most of the bees had been flushed out. A brave sole then spent the next ten minutes picking out the remaining corpses and survivors.
Tomato near death experience number three
Poor maintenance of machinery was typical at the tomato nurseries and I nearly succumbed to the efforts of a diesel powered rotorvator to kill me aided and abetted by some bodged fixing points for overhead training wire anchor points for tomato vines.
Diesel rotorvators are powerful beasts with around a one metre cultivation width. They demand assertive operators capable of winning wrestling matches with their free spirited attempts to go anywhere but where you want them to especially when the ground has been baked dry and is stoney. This particular rotorvator was evil with a notchy gearbox and a heavy clutch whose lever was akin to the old style rod brake lever on a bike .i.e. it was vertically below the handle. The other 'brake lever' was the throttle.
While reversing the rotorvator towards a gable end of one of the older style greenhouses I stumbled and fell backwards. The rotovator neatly caught my wrists between the bars and the levers and continued moving backwards and before I could extricate myself, the bars and levers punched through the class trapping my wrists against the wooden uprights. So far so good. No injuries, the engine will stall. Wrong! I could kick the gear lever into neutral. Wrong! It continued pushing backwards and because the wood wouldn't yield, the rotorvator handle s started to slide up the supports lifting me slowly onto a bluntish wooden stake which lodged between my shoulder blades I was on tiptoe and at the point of the stake breaking my skin when the engine finally stalled. Iwas no longer in a position where i could get a purchase on anything to lever myself free. I was also literally at the point of piercing my rib cage.
It took ten minutes of hollering before someone heard me, came to find out what the cause of the noise was, retreated to get the rest of the crew, reappeared with the rest of the crew, had a good laugh at my expense then pulled the rotorvator clear.
Looking back at my own incidents and that of fellow workers - one drove his tractor through the low end of a traditional green house and was pinned against the steering wheel, another looped his tractor - I just wonder how many of the incidents were logged. I count myself lucky that the machinery related accidents ended with very minor injuries but I suspect that many of the agricultural fatalities of the late seventies and early eighties were down to poor maintenance.
I can laugh about my misfortunes because I got away with it. I really believe that I have a guardian angel because I've used up a lot more than nine lives which rules me out of ever being a cat in a previous existence.
summerdays
Cycling in the sun
- Location
- Bristol
After the first incident why did they let you near anything other than a pair of secateurs and a hose pipe ....
Thomk
Guru
- Location
- Warwickshire
Green tomato chutney. I grew and made 5kg to last me all year and looooove it 
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
After the first incident why did they let you near anything other than a pair of secateurs and a hose pipe ....
Accidents were de rigeur in farming and horiculture.
slowmotion
Quite dreadful
- Location
- lost somewhere
Thank you Vernon. Beautiful stories.
I hope you don't take this personally, but would you mind terribly if I avoided your company?
I hope you don't take this personally, but would you mind terribly if I avoided your company?
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
Thank you Vernon. Beautiful stories.
I hope you don't take this personally, but would you mind terribly if I avoided your company?
You're safe. They were all solo efforts. No team members were harmed or were present in my attempts to extinguish my own life force.
vernon
Harder than Ronnie Pickering
- Location
- Meanwood, Leeds
Nah, the Co-op were too mean to buy any implements that used the PTO.
Just think of the havoc that I could have wrought with PTO gadgets.....
Considering the numbers of bees involved, it was miraculous that not one of them stung me.
U
User482
Guest
I spent years thinking that I didn't really like tomatoes, until a holiday in Spain when I was served a simple tomato salad. I then realised the problem was not tomatoes per se, but the bland pap sold in UK supermarkets. I'm now blessed with a south-facing garden with white walls, which has proven to be ideal for growing tomatoes outdoors. Gluts are dealt with in two ways: roasted with onion and garlic, then blended with basil to make a great sauce (which is superb on a pizza base), or dried in a very low oven and then preserved in oil. I rarely buy fresh tomatoes out of season, as invariably they disappoint.