The plan was...

So, an absence of little green seedlings in the potting shed meant that I had planned to get a couple, one or two plants just in case my re-sowing also produces nothing.... a couple of garden centres on Easter Monday later I am the proud purchaser of five tomato plants

a small forest of chillies and sweet peppers

and eight strawberry plants

 

I also need to replace the raspberry canes so whilst I was there thought I may as well get them as well 

I did stick to the plan where the potatoes are concerned, to get them 'in the ground' at Easter and they are now planted in the usual sacks but also a few buckets; just thought I'd try something new this year.

Re-sowing will have to wait for another day. Hopefully the weather will stabilise over the next few days as I really need to sort out the raised beds and would prefer a decent period without rain.

A good day!

Today was a good day to start sowing, so I did; 4 varieties of chilli, 2 varieties of sweet pepper, 4 varieties of tomato, cape gooseberries and strawberries. The sun has gone in now, but fingers crossed the potting shed is warm enough for the seeds to germinate in the next couple of weeks.

I don't think I have ever successfully grown strawberries from seed, but I do recall sowing them in the past... maybe 2016 is the year?!

I'm not planning anything particularly radical or new this year, just hoping for an abundance of produce to keep us well-fed, the freezer well-stocked and enough to make some chutney along the way.

Hopefully 2016 is also the year that I keep up with this blog and don't let it become neglected, again.

Ready, Steady, Sow

My 2015 season has finally begun, I've never made it to March before without sowing anything so today I brushed away numerous cobwebs in the potting shed and got on with it, just managing to beat the rain... might not look like much now, but in a few weeks these little pots of black compost will be sprouting a fine selection of seedlings (hopefully)...

To be more precise, kaibi round and orange bell peppers; fatalii, hotscotch, basque and ohnivec chillies; moneymaker, san marzano and red pear tomatoes, pot black aubergine and cape gooseberry.

I also had a go at microgreens for the first time, so in 2-3 weeks I should be garnishing my meals with tiny, colourful bursts of intense beetroot flavour.

This year I will only be growing one variety of potatoes; I opted for Bonnie, a second early that I have grown a couple of times before. They are both reliable and delicious. The seed potatoes are chitting away and should be ready to go into sacks around Easter.

Finally, I pulled up the last of the carrots, apart from a few holes they were pretty good so leaving them in the ground this long hasn't done them any harm at all.

Will need to get sowing the next batch soon.

Where on earth have I been?

It's been ages... not posted since January; so far this year it's been a slow process but hopefully things are looking up with the weather and it shouldn't take too long to catch up.

So, what's doing well?

I have a fine selection (if a bit slug & snail munched!) of courgette, pumpkin & squash in the greenhouse; some of the larger ones should be ready for planting out soon.

Cucumbers and a couple of watermelon plants are also coming along nicely.

 

 

Tomotoes are coming into their own after a very slow start.

There is a very fine tray of various lettuce needing to be planted out...

... a few peppers and a couple of cape gooseberries coming up behind everything else.

The potatoes (for Easter) clearly didn't arrive in time, but they are looking quite healthy; I doubt they will be ready yet, but I might have a bit of a rummage in the sacks to see what's there.

And finally, there are loads of flowers on the strawberries so hopefully that means there will be lots of fruit.

 

 

There is still a lot to be done though; haven't sown any peas or beans yet, only have a few brassicas, sweetcorn germination was very poor so need to resow, not sown any leeks, parsnips or turnips either as it's been too cold... I am going to be very busy for the next few weeks!

End of Year Review

So, here it is... my end of year review. First things first, lets get the disappointments out of the way:

Beetroot - what on earth happened there? I had new varieties, burpees golden and chioggia to try but they came to nothing more or less; partly because next door's cat thought that the freshly sown bed was put there for his benefit, but even subsequent sowings were poor. Old faithful boltardy did better, but I still didn't get as many as I should have done.

Brassicas - the less said about these the better; I'm not even going to detail them separately as absolutely nothing grew.

Broad beans - my first proper attempt was devastated by blackfly.

Courgettes - not a single fruit formed on any plants... actually, that's not strictly true; there were a couple but they just shrivelled up, and I have never failed to grow courgettes before.

Cucumbers - after the first couple the plants just seemed to give up so I also gave in and pulled them up.

Herbs - failed to germinate... end of story.

That's enough of that, now onto the good stuff.

I had more berries than previous years; a constant supply throughout the summer, from strawberries

to raspberries

and blackberries

Onions were spectacular

and tomatoes were consistent; they kept cropping until November

This year I also kept a tally of how much it would have cost to buy all of the fruit and veg that I produced; excluding the few things that never made it to the kitchen scales the grand total was.....




... drumroll




... £115.85 and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I'm under no illusions that I'm near self-sufficient (especially not this year), or have broken-even but still, it means I didn't spend it on produce.


The highlights were:

Potatoes £29.00
Tomatoes £15.31
Parsnips £10.55
Raspberries £8.62
Onions £8.54
Peppers £8.48
Strawberries £8.29

So, onwards and upwards to 2013 and next season!

Peppers & Chillies

Before I get to my end of year review there are one or two things that I want to give specific mention to, so think they deserve their own post; the first being peppers and chillies.

After a very slow start they did come into their own eventually and cropped for ages; here is a selection of them

 

 

 

 

I harvested the final batch at the beginning of this month

 

 

A couple of batches of chilli jam later and I'm more than happy that they came good in the end.

Whole lotta sowing going on...

... and I'm off! Sowing for the 2012 season has finally begun; a little bit later than originally planned, now that I think (hope) there won't be any more harsh frost.

Everything is in the potting shed with the tender stuff in unheated propagators, so fingers crossed it all germinates. I have sown:

• 40 tomatoes; 8 varieties (moneymaker, roma, gardener's delight, cherry, principe borghese, sub arctic plenty, rio grande, san marzano lungo)
• 40 chillies; 6 varieties (hungarian hot wax, rokita, orange wonder, aji crystal, cayenne, unknown from a mexican restaurant)
• 40 sweet peppers; 5 varieties (california wonder, corno rosso, bellboy, diablo, ozarowska)
• 6 aubergines; 2 varieties (viserba, black beauty)
• 6 cape gooseberries
• rocket
• mixed salad 

and finally, the charlotte seed potatoes have been put out to chit.

Bring on Spring!!

Magnificent Peppers

I have had some spectacular peppers this summer, both sweet and chilli

The last sweet peppers were picked in mid-September. They freeze extremely well and I have a few batches tucked away to use in all manner of recipes.

In the main, chillies kept producing until mid-October and I had to pick them all at once because they were starting to dry on the plants

Scotch bonnet came in later than the other chillies; this pic was taken on the same day as the above

and I picked this very one today

I repeated my successful preserving method from last year for the excess chillies and pickled them

or turned them into traffic light chilli jam

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.

Ripe Sweet Peppers... almost

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.

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.