A very productive day

I spent today working from my favourite office...

... and a very productive day it was too.

The shop-bought tomato plants have romped away; shirley and sweet million in particular have been potted on into their final pots.

Lagging waaaaaay behind are my home-sown red pear and gardener's delight; these are the only tomatoes that germinated so I am determined to keep them healthy so that they produce well later in the year.

In other late germination news, I have one cape gooseberry seedling... it's teeny tiny at the moment, but again, I will do everything I can to make sure it grows.

Hopefully we are over the freezing cold weather now, so things will start to warm up and therefore speed up.

The first of the cucurbits appeared a few days ago and there are now four courgette seedlings, but sadly no cucumbers yet.

I have gone back to the original varieties of peas, beans and sweetcorn that I grew in my first year; these modules and pots contain golden sweet yellow podded mange tout, cherokee trail of tears beans and double standard bicolour sweetcorn.

I also sowed a few of my favourite 'heading' lettuces, lollo rossa and little gem as well as a variety of mixed salad leaves including rocket, mizuna, mesclun and a spicy mix, so will soon be picking rather than buying lettuce for the dinner table.

Outside, the onions, shallots and garlic that I planted out a couple of weeks or so ago are starting to show signs of growth.

But there is no sign of the beetroot or leeks that I sowed direct at the same time... maybe due to the frost that followed shortly after, maybe not... it might just be too soon.

I also got a fair bit of sorting and tidying done; including going through all of my seed packets and disposing of the partially used sachets from 3+ years ago. I feel as if I have almost caught up with where I need to be at this point in the season... long may the good weather continue!

Summer Sowing

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.

Evening Harvest

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

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

Legumes

My first sowing of mange tout have been planted out into one of the new raised beds in the front garden

They were joined by my first sowing of delikata peas in a reusable growbag

French beans had a bit of a shaky start; I sowed 10 each of delinel and gold dukkat just over a week ago and left them on the staging in the greenhouse... the next morning I came down to this

I suspect it was a mouse as they tend to go for these types of seeds... I posted a quick query on the veggie forum to see if fellow gardeners agreed with my suspicions and some people suggest chitting the seeds before sowing or covering them in something that mice don't like e.g. mustard or paraffin!! 

Anyway, once I got over the fact that there had been a mouse (or mice) in my greenhouse, I popped the damaged ones back in the modules and added a new seed to each, before moving them into the potting shed on a higher shelf (just in case).

It didn't take long for them to germinate and some of the damaged ones have also survived as some of the modules have 2 seedlings poking out

I thought I may as well do another sowing of all legumes, so a couple of days later resowed all of the above along with old faithful cherokee trail of tears; these are also pushing their heads out of the compost in record time

Carrots.... hmmmmm

I can't say that my attempts at carrots (or roots in general) this year have been successful, because they haven't. The first few sowings in the ground didn't even germinate so I tried sowing in tubs. I picked a handful of tiny paris market a few months ago now and thought I would leave the others to grow on but they haven't come to much at all. This was one tub of chantenay that I picked today.

The remaining tubs, paris market and early nantes have lots of greenery but nothing underneath?! Today's pickings will accompany roast dinner, I just wish I had a few more.

All is not lost though, I did have another surprise bean harvest... they just keep on coming.

And also, I finally emptied out my penultimate bag of potatoes, that I have been rummaging in every now and then and pulling out a few; I was not expecting to find this many left in the bag.

Surprise Harvests

I thought the french beans had come to an end, but having left the remaining ones on the plants to dry, I have continued to harvest on a couple of occasions since. This was two weeks ago

This was last week

And it looks like I will be picking another portion for today's dinner.

This little gold rush courgette was another surprise a couple of weeks ago.

I think the plant has definitely finished now though, the other fruit rotted before they got to a decent size. I have one all green bush plant that is still producing regularly so courgettes in general aren't finished yet.

This time last year....

... I had red and orange sweet peppers all over my california wonder plants. This season has been so different; Tuesday marked the harvesting of the first red pepper... it was a bellboy, still a bit green on one side  but I wanted to use it so picked it.

I had to pick a couple of green ones and one that was on the turn yesterday because the stems had broken under the weight of them.

French beans had come to an end by now and it looks as if this season's are finishing too. I picked about a handful yesterday, but I think I will leave the remaining ones on the plants to dry and provide seeds for next year's sowing.

Courgettes had finished too, in my notes I mentioned pulling up the last of the plants. This year I still have one all green bush producing regularly and the remaining gold rush has about 5 little courgettes on it... maybe they won't come to anything, will just have to wait and see.

I didn't manage to produce any aubergine last year; this year I had two, but had to pick the second one, which was still quite small yesterday because the colour had started to fade which by all accounts is a sign that it has passed it's best. Luckily it still tasted okay roasted with some other veg.

I had also picked all of the ripe tomatoes by now and harvested the green ones for making chutney. This year they are still ripening pretty consistently; this was yesterday's batch.

I didn't grow pumpkins at all last year, and this year's results have been mixed. From three surviving plants I had three pumpkins growing fairly well I thought, although one of them was a bit elongated. The largest of the three started to turn orange a few weeks ago, which I thought was too early but couldn't do anything about it, and the main stem started to shrivel up. The third one got attacked by something, not sure what but it had a big gash in the side of it then it rapidly went soft and rotted.

Yesterday I noticed that the largest one (now fully orange) had a similar looking mark on it to the one that rotted, although a bit smaller so I harvested it.

I had high hopes for that pumpkin, even though it looks the part colour wise, it is a lot smaller than I expected or wanted it to be... smaller than a football and it peaked way too early. Anyway, click here to see what I did with it.

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.

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

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

Legumes... last and first

I picked the last of the mange tout and peas yesterday, and cut down the plants.

I'm not sure how long they are supposed to crop for, but having checked my records from previous years, the mange tout last for about a month before the leaves turn yellow and production slows down. Plus, during the week the plants took a battering from the wind and collapsed on themselves so were even more tangled than normal.

They always seem to stop just before the french beans start producing too... not sure if that's coincidence or design, but I'll be picking a few of these later today.

Making the most of the spring sunshine

I have been making the most of the recent good weather and luckily had a few a few days away from work so have been able to spend a lot of time in the garden.

Yesterday I planted out a row each of peas and mange tout into the raised bed. My cunning trick to stop the slugs and snails was to scatter vermiculite around them. I'm sure they won't like crawling over that to get the goodies and it seems to have worked last night anyway.

I was also pleased to see that 6 of the minipop seeds have germinated in the greenhouse.

First thing this morning I continued with planting out...

... brassicas; evesham special, raab and all year round are now located in the raised bed, protected by cabbage collars for the root fly and a net for the butterfly... the last thing I want is them laying their eggs all over the plants.

... and onions; kamal and sweet spanish have now been planted in the bed with the shallots and leeks (that have yet to make an appearance). Talking of onions, the pickling kind; barletta and purplette have germinated in their separate bulb crate.

 I also did a fair bit of sowing today, undercover:

• Brussels Sprout (Red Delicious) x 5
• Brussels Sprout (Evesham Special) x 2
• Broccoli (Green Heading Calabrese) x 3
• Broccoli (Early Purple Sprouting) x 1
• Cauliflower (Autumn Giant) x 2
• Cabbage (Savoy) x 2
• French Beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears) x 8
• French Beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears) x 8 that I saved myself a couple of years ago
• Peas (Golden Sweet Yellow Mangetout) x 8

Outdoors I sowed:

• Chard (White Silver 2) x 1 row in the raised bed
• Lambs Lettuce in a trough
• Spring Onion (Ishikura) x 1 row in a bulb crate
• Spring Onion (White Lisbon) x 1 row in a bulb crate

and planted the first batch of main crop potatoes (Rooster) into potato bags.

Elsewhere, the pea shoots are coming along nicely:

... so I decided to sow another batch of those in the greenhouse, but the herbs could be doing better, so I direct sowed the following in various containers outdoors; rosemary, chives, sage, mint, thyme, parsley, basil, dill, chervil and coriander.

Heading lettuces are also growing well:

I was tempted to plant them out too because quite a few of the roots are already showing through the bottom of the pots. I managed to stop myself, but did sow 3 Romana Bougival seeds, which is a new variety for me.

I think I managed to cover all the vegetable groups so all in all a very productive couple of days.

Past Successes - French Beans

The photos really don't do these justice - I have been buried under the weight of these prolific croppers for the past two years and they are delicious... I never thought I would enjoy eating raw beans straight from the plant.