Most of my sowings from last week have already come up; in the potting shed, chinese cabbage
and lettuce
Outside in the wicker planter, both chicory and wild rocket have come up
I may get some autumn / winter salads after all.
I also have some larger seedlings in the potting shed. I went to a food festival a couple of months ago and one of the pop-up restaurants was giving away chilli seeds. Even though I thought it was probably too late for them to mature and produce any fruit this year, and unlikely I would be able to successfully over winter them I sowed a couple anyway... this is them now.
Will just have to see how I get on with them.
I like to think that my produce is talented... this is what someone else managed to get them to do.
Vegetable Dance
It made me laugh.
Once again my good intentions to sow successionally have fallen by the wayside, so today I attempted to rectify that by sowing a selection of lettuce (reine de glaces, little gem, romaine ballon and romana bougival), chicory, wild rocket, spring onions, chinese cabbage, calabrese and autumn king carrots. I'm about a month behind with the carrots so will just have to wait and see if anything comes up. It would be fantastic to have some to pull up on Christmas day.
On that subject, the potatoes for Christmas are coming along nicely; the plants are now peeking over the top of their sacks and looking very healthy
I gave them one last topping up with compost so they should be okay outside for a while yet.
Today's harvest made for a very pretty trug so I thought I'd share a picture of that too
I have decided that the peppers are actually sweet banana... I saw some similar plants in the garden centre today and they look exactly the same, plus the description that they ripen to orange then red was exactly what mine have done.
Similarly, I think that the orange chilli peppers are cheyenne because I saw them in the garden centre too... mystery solved.
... first corn on the cob of the year, off the plant and in a pan of boiling water in seconds
:-) :-) :-)
Sweet peppers are starting to ripen... the red ones (bellboy) - need to find a way to turn this round without snapping it off as the back of it is still very green
the yellow ones (luteus)
but these ones (sweet long), according to the picture on the label are supposed to be dark green
I suppose I should have thought something was amiss because they started out a light green / yellow colour so it was probably unlikely they would ripen to dark green.
It's not just restricted to sweet peppers, I think I have previously mentioned that one of my cayenne plants doesn't seem to be producing cayenne chillies... don't think they are supposed to be orange / yellow and they are the wrong shape
The jalepenos on the other hand which should be chunky and are ideal for stuffing, look more like cayenne
I previously suspected a bit of label swapping as I bought all my peppers as little plants, but who knows. As long as the chillies are hot and the sweet ones are sweet, it doesn't really matter that much.
... just the regular kind though, pears and plums to be precise. Both trees have now been stripped of fruit.
I read somewhere that you are supposed to pick pears when they are slightly under ripe, which is how I prefer to eat them anyway. So these have been picked at the perfect time.
The plums on the other hand are probably a bit over ripe. I'll know for next time to give them a squeeze rather than look at the colour of them. I can't remember what variety they are but for some reason I thought they wouldn't be ready until they are red. A few of them should still be okay to eat now, but most of them will go into a preserve of some kind.
I made a small batch of jam with some of them a week or so ago, so maybe I'll try a chutney recipe with these ones.
When growing something for the first time I'm always a little bit cautious about when to harvest, so with regards to my cape gooseberries I thought I'd go with how they look on top of desserts in fancy restaurants.
I know that the outside is supposed to be light brown, a bit see-through and feel like paper, so this one looked about right.
You can also see that the fruit inside is orange and when I gave it a squeeze it was firm with a little bit of give. There is also a very sweet smell coming off the plant. So I picked it and was not disappointed.
The taste was amazing!
There are a few more that are ready to be picked now, but also lots of green ones
and even some new flowers appearing
I have no idea how long it is supposed to produce fruit for but hopefully for a while yet.
... and it's a bigun!
I did actually let this one grow on purpose, unlike previous specimens which caught me by surprise.
I didn't notice any smaller ones on any of the plants so I think this might be it now.
I'll leave the plants in the ground until I need the space just in case there are a few late arrivals.
First ripe chillies were picked this morning.
According to the label the orange ones claim to be cayenne... don't think that's correct though. All my chillies were bought as little plants this year so I guess someone was having fun label swapping. I'm not too fussed what they are as long as they are hot.
I haven't successfully grown beetroot for a couple of years; I think they just failed to grow... all leaf and no root, so I was glad to see these ones sitting proud of the soil. There are still a few more in the ground so hopefully they will root up too.
I was surprised when the beefsteak tomatoes started to ripen so soon.
They are not the biggest beefsteaks I have ever seen... only slightly bigger than the regular tomatoes, but last year most of this variety had some sort of deformity so I can cope with them being a little under-sized... good things come in small packages after all.
... I emptied my trial bucket of main crop potatoes (desiree) today. It is a bit early, but the tops had dried out and flopped over on all my remaining potato sacks so I wanted to see what was going on.
The tubers were absolutely fine.
So, I have now removed the stems from all potato sacks and will effectively be using the compost to store them until required rather than expecting them to grow any more. Hopefully they will be okay.
... have already appeared through the compost. I sowed 6 charlotte and 6 red duke of york into potato sacks 2 weeks ago
This is how they looked today; I'm pretty impressed
A previous attempt at potatoes for Christmas was a disaster, although on that occasion I re-sowed my home grown tubers. This time I used proper seed potatoes from the garden centre.
I was supposed to top up the compost, but didn't get round to it... this is a must do for tomorrow evening and hopefully they'll be pushing through again in a couple of weeks.
Harvesting my first parsnip a couple of weeks ago was a bit (well a lot) of a struggle. I was huffing and puffing, trying to dig round it with a trowel without damaging the neighbouring roots and using sheer brute force. It did not want to budge.
I did have images of a cartoon-type end to the fight where I pull it out of the ground and fall flat on my backside... the time it took, I would have settled for that.
When it finally came out of the ground I still didn't manage to get it out in one piece; the tip remained it the soil.
I really, really enjoyed eating it I can tell you.
I did a quick run round the garden yesterday evening and this was the veggie haul
It included the first picking of baby sweetcorn, although I think I left them a bit late so they are slightly bigger than they should be
I also picked a handful or so of blackberries; these have been ripening for the past couple of weeks
