Back after the break

After a lovely holiday in the Netherlands we came back to find our plot in good health. A kindly neighbouring plot holder had been roped in to water (and eat) the tomatoes and they were all doing very well.


Many things have sprung into life or attained monster proportions. Peas and bean plants are getting to a good size, one of the courgettes is well on the way to becoming a marrow, several of the lean-house™ tomatoes are a good size, and the cucumber had run away with itself and has become enough for a whole meal rather than an addition to salad.

Some huckleberries have also ripened and flowers are starting to appear on the squash.

And . . . we have some leaves appearing on the 'christmas' potatoes.


The seeds I put in for turnips, radish, spring onions, and beetroot have come through as well, I just hope the weather will be good enough for them to grow to a decent enough size. The radishes should be quick enough.


The seeds in the greenhouse are doing well too, the rainbow chard is looking pretty already.

Not quite the Whistle Stop Café

One of the branches of our plum tomato plant had bent with the weight of the tomatoes and broken so I brought home the green tomatoes. Not quite enough for green tomato chutney (I'm waiting til September for that) so I decided on fried green tomatoes.



I dipped halved tomatoes into egg (they were only small so I decided on halves rather than slices) then put those into a little tub of flour with chili flakes, pepper and salt in it and shook them around until coated. They then went into hot oil for about 3 mins each side.

I wasn't amazed by the taste, but they looked very pretty on the plate and I think I'll try them again another time.

Plans for Autumn

Our seeds have arrived from the Organic Gardening Catalogue so the next few days before we go on holiday will be spent sowing seeds so that they have hopefully have germinated by the time we return.

The beetroot, radish, and turnips will get sown direct into the beds (I will harvest the beetroot and carrots that are in at the moment), but the spring onion, endive, swiss chard, and lettuce will get sown in trays for later transplanting outside. I'll probably only be able to do that with one sowing unless we have a very mild autumn, but after that I hope to be able to continue with lettuce and endive in a cold frame or the lean-house™ through the winter. I already have some little gem lettuce going which I'm going to put in all the gaps that are emerging as things get harvested. They aren't quite big enough to go out yet, but they are getting there.

I'm also considering a fig tree, I've been wanting one for ages and I don't think I can stop myself any longer. The choice is now Gardening Express or Guardian. I had some lovely witch hazels from Gardening Express, so maybe I should go with them. Hopefully the tree will come with small fruit already on it.

<edit> Just noticed that you get 15 free Purple Alliums with the Guardian, so that might swing it!

Wash Out

Well it was throwing it down today so the work day and BBQ didn't happen. So we now have a freezer full of burgers ready to go for a couple of weeks time when we will try again.

However, even with the rain, we managed to get something useful done today. Our seed potatoes arrived for our mimi 'christmas' potato crop, so we got them in rubble sacks and an old compost bag.


These are sat in the lean-house for now, I didn't want them to get completely drowned before they had even started going in the bags (although the bags do have drainage holes pierced in them it really is far too wet today).

We also took out the remaining broad bean plants, as they were covered in 'rust'. This is fine in itself at this stage in their lives, but we have just put some dwarf bean plants in nearby and didn't want it to transfer to them too, as they are only small. Some of the beans were quite young so I've left them in their pods and will just slice them up and throw them in a stew, rather than opening them up and being rewarded only with a couple of beans the size of dried lentils.


And today I also brought home a courgette and courgette flower. I keep reading about deep fried courgette flowers, so that is what I'm going to do with this one, I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Huckleberry Funn

My huckleberries are starting to form berries, which is exciting. I didn't think that they would start doing it so early as I thought that they would be ready around November-ish.


I'm looking forward to Huckleberry Jam now.

Living off (someone else's) Land

I collected some apples from a neighbouring plot the other day, after OKing it with the secretary. The plot isn't being used at the moment and the apples were starting to fall off the tree. I can't cope with needless waste like that so went and rescued some of them.I had about 5 pounds in the end. I divided that up, the ones in the silver bowl are for tart tatin, the ones in the clear tub for apple sauce, and the ones laying down on the board for apple jelly. So far I've only made the apple jelly , I cooked up the apples with water and a star anise, then let the liquid drip through muslin to strain it. Then added sugar to the liquid (1 pound of sugar per pint of liquid) , stir as the sugar melts and it comes to the boil, and then you boil rapidly for 10mins . I allowed it to cool a little and then added a bit of whisky ( I used Talisker). Tastes quite good so far, but the recipe advised waiting 3 months before use.



The tart tatin is under construction as I write, I will post pictures once it is done.

I'm going to try and harvest the rest of the apples on the community work day this saturday and then anyone who wants any can take them. I'm also going to do the sauce by then so we can eat it with our sausages.

Strawberries and Heatstores

The tomatoes seem to be doing well in the lean-house™ , quite a few flowering and some have some fruit too.
Also in there now are some strawberry runners which we have potted up. We have left some to just root themselves in the existing patch but we want to have another patch as well, so nine have come out to get moved later in the year when the bed becomes free.



As you can see they are sat on bricks. We have added these as a drainage aid and heatstore to the lean-house™. We had to dig a trench to put the back wall in (to get it level and to get the right slope on the roof) this has been filling with water a bit so we have moved some of the rubble that is on the plot into it. This means we can then sit plants on top of this without them having to get soggy bottoms. Hopefully this will act as a heat store too, and keep the night-time temperature up later in the year.


We haven't put the ends on yet, but the temperature is still pretty god so we are going to leave it for a while.

Another bout of weeding

You can now see our cabbages and onions a bit better, as we had a massive weeding session around them, they seem to be doing rather well, although there are only a few onions still in.


Most of them are drying on a rack in the greenhouse. I'm glad we did it, they are the first two beds we see as we come in the gate and it is much nicer now they are free of weeds. It was also nice not to be building something, but actually getting up close and personal with the soil and plants.

But . . . on the drying and building front, we are thinking of trying to make a solar airer/dehydrator. Saw a thing on TV on the "it's not easy being green' programme, and I think we have all the bits we need: wood, glass, black plastic, wire mesh. And hopefully soon we will have lots of tomatoes, so it would be good to be able to dry some and have our own dried tomatoes to put in pasta and on pizzas. Might as well make use of the warm sunny weather while it is here.

Tomatoes on my Potatoes

I thought I was imagining things the other day, and then remembered that tomatoes and potatoes are both of the Solanaceae family. My potatoes had little berries that looked like tomatoes!

They are inedible, in fact somewhat poisonous. I've been told the berry production is unusual, but about 6 of our plants seem to have fruit. I think I'll remove them so that the plants concentrate on the tubers rather than trying to produce a new generation.

Although we grew potatoes as a child I never remember the flowers setting and producing fruit.

Somewhat more worryingly I thought we may have blight, but having looked at the plants it looks like early blight, which isn't too damaging, rather than late blight. Early blight is also supposedly unusual, so we obviously have odd potatoes. The difference is explained here but one of the main differences seems to be early blight being shaped on the leaves by the position of the veins.

I cut the leaves with signs of it off and burnt them, just in case, and will keep a close eye on them to see of anything further develops. I also signed up for the blight forecast here from the British Potato Council, this uses temperature and weather forecasting, and local sightings of blight in your area to alert you to the risk.

All our tomatoes are unaffected, both indoor and outdoor ones.

Flowers

New Potatoes for Christmas and Tales of Other Veg

I wanted to get some Ransoms (wild garlic) which started an order with the Organic Gardening Catalogue and turned itself into an order for various things to grown from late summer through til the end of the year. On the list are turnips, 'spring' onions, some fast growing beetroot, rainbow chard, endive, some long spicy radish, and some lettuce to grow first outdoors and then in the Lean-house™ later on. That should keep us going through the winter.

We also want to grow potatoes for Christmas. I know that if we put some second earlies in now they should be good in time for Christmas (some ready as early as October), but getting hold of the seed potatoes was quite tricky. A wild goose-chase to somewhere with no stock via the Telegraph, a cancelled order somewhere else, and then finally Dobies seem to have the goods.

We plan to grow them in bags, maybe on one of the beds that is having some down time, some maybe in the lean-house™ to keep them warm. Then hopefully home grown new potatoes on Christmas Day.

New Bed

Our beans are doing rather well in their drain pipe, so we decided it was time to prepare a bed for them to go into. To one side of the potato, bean, and cabbage beds there was a space next to the fence, filled with weeds and grass and an old chair. A frame was constructed, the space cleared and a new bed installed.


We haven't put the beans in yet, we are going to let them get a bit bigger, but we sowed some peas in there. Hopefully we will get some autumn peas and beans from that bed to freeze for over winter. We've surrounded the place where we've sown the peas with copper mesh tape to try and keep the slugs off the seedlings.

Aubergine No 1

We have harvested our first aubergine!



I'm so proud! It is off the plant that we bought as a little seedling, so it isn't quite all our own work, but I have high hopes for the ones we have grown from seed as they are flowering now.

It went into a curry but I'm thinking of Baba Ganoush for the next one.