Missed another one

I'm sure the courgettes are hiding... I check them pretty much every day but then every now and again come across one that cannot have been there the day before. A case in point last week

And last month

As per the last couple of years, courgettes have been producing really well; they are currently being included with every meal and my freezer already has a few portions ready for winter cooking. They are great thrown in a bolognese.

New varieties done good!

This year I tried two new french bean varieties and one new variety of pea.

The pea was delikata and I chose it because it can be picked as mange tout or will mature into peas. My past experience with peas has not been very good, either picking them too soon or leaving them too long... so to be on the safe side I have been picking them as mange tout.

The only ones that made it to the pea stage were a few pods that I accidently missed until it was too late to pick them as mange tout so I let them grow on. The first time there were only 3 pods

When I opened them up, one was completely empty which was a bit random, but the others were suitably contained

I tasted one of them and it was a complete pea explosion... I have never tasted anything so sweet, I ended up eating them all before I even had a chance to think about cooking them. I will definitely be growing them next year, specifically for peas rather than mange tout.

The french beans have just started to be ready for harvesting, well I picked these three a week ago, but they were just ahead of the rest on the plants for some reason

Both are dwarf varieties. The yellow ones are called gold dukkat and they are now producing very quickly... good job they are easy to spot against the green leaves of the plant.

I already have a batch of these in the freezer. The green ones, delinel are a bit behind but just as tasty.

Overall, I am very pleased with these new varieties and hope to continue picking every day for the foreseeable

Eek! What happened to my potato plant?

My walk around the garden yesterday morning discovered a very unhealthy looking potato plant

I had a dig around in the bag and found the specimen that is sitting on top of the soil in the picture so was praying that everything else beneath the soil would be okay.

When I emptied it out, there was quite a haul of healthy looking tubers.

Whilst I am pleased that the crop wasn't ruined these were charlottes, my second earlies and I have 3 sacks of first earlies to get through before I wanted to start on these ones.

Another case of why did this happen? The soil wasn't too wet or too dry; the rest of the charlotte (and other potato) plants are fine in their sacks; they have all been treated the same way and seem to be thriving.

Guess I will never know...

What is it with Peppers 2?

A previous post back in April discussed the problems I was having with peppers sown from seed. I had managed to germinate 1 bellboy, 1 ozarowska, 4 chilli shake and 2 apache plants; well, the bellboy actually turned out to be some sort of aubergine... the leaves gave it away as it grew - must be more meticulous with my labels!

The others however refuse to grow for some reason. They were in 4 inch pots for ages and I thought maybe if I move them to larger pots even though they weren't showing roots at the bottom they would spread their wings and grow... well they haven't.

They are all still around 4 inches tall, but the weird thing is, they have started to produce flowers and fruit...

I don't get it!! Each variety has done the same thing. On the other hand the shop bought ones that were about 4 inches tall when I got them have grown tremendously well.

Maybe I should stop trying to find reasons why and just accept that this is how it is.

Ripe Tomato

I picked the first ripe tomato today; a moneymaker from the plants sown in January.

This time last year... pretty much to the day, I picked the first ripe tomato (see here).

I couldn't have planned it.