First ripe tomato!

Just for the record, and because it’s one of the exciting days of the gardening year, here’s our first ripe tomato, picked this evening, a few days later than in other years but very welcome and there will be more very soon. I sliced it thinly, sprinkled it with salt and chopped basil and poured some Picholine olive oil over it – that was all it needed.

It’s one of the variety that we’ve named Gabian breakfast because it produces fruits that are just the right size for one serving of Spanish-style tomato flesh rubbed onto grilled bread with olive oil for breakfast.  We accidentally created this last year from cross-fertilisation the year before and, of course, it is changing again already and seems to be reverting to the indigenous Languedocian variety we also grow.  Beautiful, isn’t it?

As well as another courgette and three aubergines, we also picked this big bowl full of apricots, and there are at least twice as many still ripening on the tree.  After a couple of lean years, this is the best crop we’ve ever had from this Rouge de Roussillon tree that we planted about eight years ago.