Pleasantly Surprised

I think I have previously mentioned the cabbage white community that have moved into my garden. The consequence of this is that I am constantly fighting with eggs, baby caterpillars and the nasty full grown ones.

Well, today I braved the far corner of the brassica bed to see if there might be anything worth picking for today's dinner and found a cabbage... not 100% sure what variety, but I think I put a couple of savoys in that section of the bed.

Anyway, the tough outer leaves were peppered with evidence of caterpillars (or slugs perhaps?) having been there, but once I removed them, the cabbage itself looked untouched.

So quick was I to discover if any creatures had taken up residence inside the cabbage that I didn't take a photo of it in all it's glory... so this is what it looked like part-way through the chopping process.

And there were no creepy crawlies!!

Latest from the Garden

Tomatoes have been ripening for a while, and they are now coming thick and fast. This was yesterday's haul

Some of them had split, I assume because of all the rain we have had and the amount of water they have taken on so I put them aside for cooking... probably a nice bolognese today. I separated out another batch for freezing

The remainder will be used in salads. My latest sowing of lettuces aren't quite ready, but I cut a few of the leaves from each plant which was more than enough

In the greenhouse, the second aubergine is coming along nicely

Most of the chillies have ripened to a glorious red colour

And... there is some ripening on the sweet peppers.

Hopefully the others will follow soon.

Aubergine :-)

:-)   :-)  :-)

Let the freezing commence...

If I'm going to achieve self-sufficiency one day I need to get into the habit of freezing excess produce rather than consuming portions that are far too large... even if veg is extremely good for you.

So to start this off, today I picked and froze two portions of tomatoes and a bag of beans.

Today's Pickings

Potatoes

Tomatoes

Baby Sweetcorn... I think that's the last of it for this year

Calabrese... a couple of the buds had opened; I picked them off and am hoping it's still edible

Courgette... a big one!

Why won't my peppers go red, or orange?

It's all in the title... I have romanos that should be red

and bells that should be red or orange

... they look spectacular, but are staying green. They are sharing the greenhouse with red tomatoes and red chillies, so there must be enough sun to ripen them.

I have picked a couple and used them green but I want red and orange ones, especially as I intend to save some of the seeds to sow next year; to get the best chance of a good crop they need to be from ripe specimens.

Lettuce

I have just planted out my latest batch of lettuce; a selection of reine de glaces, romain ballon, little gem and lollo rossa.

The bed was really dry since I picked the last lettuce so I gave it a good drenching before I put them in.

As long as the slugs / snails keep their slimy jaws away I should get a few nice salads out of them.

It's been a while...

... since broccoli featured in my postings, well I harvested the first calabrese this morning

I admit it's not the best looking specimen and it'a a bit small... I think it's been nibbled and I have been struggling to cope with the community of cabbage whites that seem to have set up home my garden.

I've removed all traces of caterpillar and I'm sure it will still taste lovely in a stir fry with the rest of today's harvest

The Aubergine has fruited!!!

Joy of joys.... my first ever aubergine

Not only that... there are two of them

This is from a vegetable that I have failed to produce in previous years and struggled to germinate this year, so I am absolutely over the moon.

More Baby Sweetcorn

I picked some more baby sweetcorn today. For some reason the sweetcorn plants seem to be a haven for ladybirds, so I have to gently coax them away before harvesting. This is them straight off the plant

and here they are all cleaned up

It will be going in a stir-fry I think.

Baby Sweetcorn

I tried growing baby sweetcorn (minipop) for the first time this year; the plants are absolutely huge, taller than the regular type

I wasn't sure when to pick them so did a quick search on the internet; one view was to pick a couple of days after the tassels appear, another was to pick before the tassels appear.

This didn't really leave me with much option because tassels had been out for a few days on a couple of mine. So, these are the two I picked yesterday

They tasted absolutely beautiful, but I am disappointed with the yield; each plant produces 2-3 cobs, which is what you get with the full sized ones. Unless you have loads of space to spare, you're better off growing the regular ones or something else. Mental note: need more growing space!

Garlic Update

I pulled up the rest of the garlic a couple of days ago and have been leaving it outside to dry. This is what it looks like today

The one that I pulled up a couple of weeks ago has now dried and contrary to my earlier post about it, the cloves were separated; I just needed to let it dry out before cutting into it... so that's a lesson learnt. These are the last few cloves

Daily Harvests 2

The content of my daily harvests has changed; I am now regularly picking tomatoes... this is a selection of urbikany, gardener's delight, red cherry and the first roma

and french beans

First & Last Cucurbits

I picked the first of the all green bush courgettes a couple of weeks ago; they were tiny, but I wanted to get the plant moving. Last week I had the first fully grown one
 

These are now producing very well, whilst the tondo di toscana and gold rush are definitely slowing down. I think I was quite lucky to get these two a couple of days ago, and there is probably only one more gold rush left in my most prolific plant

The yellow scallop squash haven't done particularly well. I have only had two from two plants. There are lots of flowers but not much fruit and I have treated them the same as the other cucurbits?!

They tasted nice enough sautéed in spicy butter with the courgettes, there just aren't enough of them.

Mini-white cucumbers are also coming to an end. I picked this selection of mis-shapen and oddly coloured cucumbers a couple of days ago

and turned them into chutney.

New Month, New Pickings

I picked the first peppers today; 2 bellboy

a chilli shake (not really sure what variety it is) and 2 apache

The bellboy have been that size for a while and don't seem to be making much of an attempt to turn red, so I thought I may as well pick them and hopefully some of the later ones will change colour... plus I need peppers for today's dinner.

These two apache are the only chillis to have turned red, and they are the smallest ones. There are loads of larger, green peppers on the plant and some which are just starting to change colour.

I also emptied the first bag of rooster potatoes, here they are with the last of the charlottes

The plants died back a week or so ago, but I read somewhere that it's okay to leave them in situ until they are needed. They are not particularly large, but hopefully they will taste okay.