The month of plenty-August
Tomato's galore
This is our conservatory. In the fore part of the picture we have the Zuckerman tomato plants which are a delicious sweet and juicy variety. Once they ripen they don’t last for long though- have to eat them quick!!
Furthe ralong the windown sill we have tomato plants grown from seed from some baby plum tomatos we brought from Lidl’s earlier in the year. They are normally grown in Morocco I think so we had no idea how they would do being gron in the UK. Although the plants are not quite so green and heatly as the Zuckermans they have nonetheless done extremely well. The plum tomatos are tasty enough and have the adavantge of lasting quite a while once ripe- I guess thats makes them a good supermarkert variety so they can be transported. It’s useful as there is justthe 2 of us so we don’t always eat many tomato’s everyday and the little plum ones we can just let ripen some more on the vine- it seems to improve the flavour further.
In the veg plot we have loads of broccoli, white cabbage, beans of all varieties- purlpe Dwarf French, green Climbing French beans and of course runner beans. We also have carrots- purple sninned ones as well as the ‘normal’ organge ones. The purple ones have a slight bitter taste and I prepfer the sugarsnap carrot we have grown this year.
Have been busy harvesting the pottatoes. We have a winderful harvest of King Edward maincrop potatoes. We have already been using these for a few weeks for roasts- absolutely the best roasting potato and better that the shop brought ones. Our othe rmain crop was Maris Piper buth these seem to have suffered damage from slugs etc quite early I thought- perhaps we shoudl have harvested them a couple of weeks ago to reduce this damage?
Our second earlies this year were Kestrel variety. These make superb chips but when boiled palin tend to fall apart before they are cooked. Are rather tastless as a boiled potato as well so have been a bit of a disappointment and we won’t be growing this variety again.
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July 2011 -new tastes to try..
As well as our tried and tested Mangetout , peas and French beans that are ready this time of year I also thought I’d experiment a bit this year with some veg new to me. The first of this years crop of that vein is now ready- my asparagus peas. I started them off in wire cages as I didn’t know if the pigeons would take them (as they do my pea plants), but as they did not touch the ones I also planted outside the cage I deemed them safe and removed the cages. I also had no idea if they would grow up and need supports. Initialy the young plants grew side ways for a few inches and were very slow to get going but last month they took off and starting growing up a bit as well but they tended to grow sideways more than up and so ended up rather a straggly mess as you can see from the picture! I did plant them closer together than I should have done which probably did not help.
Straggly Asparagus Pea Plant.
Asparagus Pea= the pods
The plant produces bright red flowers and then angular pods. The first harvest of the pods I got was 2nd July and they are quite prolific. The taste is described as subtle and to me that is about right- they do not taste of much!
Cape Gooseberry plants.
Cape Gooseberyy -fruits forming
Our Cape Goosebery plants were another experiment this year. After initially being very slow to germinate we ended up with loads of plants and gave lots away. We kept about half a dozen and 3-4 are still doing well. Most are outside with only space for one plant in the conservatory but this one is now producing its papery lanterns.
Turnip- free seeds turn out to be a good surpise! Thank you Veg seeds.net.
I would not have grown Turnips had I not got these seeds for free when I placed an order for other other seeds. As I had them I tried them and have been pleasnatnyl surprised. This early variety is very tasty and will be part of our meal tonight!
Tomato-have we finally have a variety that tastes good??
Tomato variety- Zuckgrtraube
- Calabrese- green sprouting
This is another vegetable I have grown from seed from vegetable seeds.net. The green sprouting calabrese looks delicious and the first of this years crop is on the menu for tomorrow. It has grown much tighter and better looking heads than the varieties I have previously grown. I had sown some old seed next to this plant and it has not done so well and so it is not just the growning conditions this year. Hopefully it tastes as good as it looks…..
early June 2011-starting to harvest
Yes, we have our first harvest from this years plants- the peas are producing pods and we have had a couple of small portions of mangetout peas -delicious. These are pea plants we started indoors to prevent the mice getting the seeds and they had a head start on the ones I planted direct which actually did quite well as the mice did not find them this year (the picture of the left shows the larger plants in the middle and the ones to the left are the ones planted direct. To the right of these are our Asparagus pea plants. These were an experiment (seeds from vegetable seeds.net) as we have never tried the vegetable before I so don’t know if we will like them!. The plants started slowly and sort of spread across the ground but have now got going and one has a pretty purple flower on it.
Asparagus pea plant with its first purple flower
To follow up on the idea mentioned in my previous post -we had installed a windsock to deter pigeons- well it has not worked- as expected really. It makes a nice ornament though so it is staying put! The cabbages I planted out underneath the windsock without any other protection have been shredded by the pigeons. The ones in our wire cages are fine and so we shall have to continue with this practice. The wire cages have worked really well for the peas and although it does make it a bit more tricky to get to the pods it is still OK. We saw some purple podded peas at an RHS garden whilst on holiday last week and this does seem like a great idea- so much easier to find the pods to harvest them.
The onions seems to be doing very well this year. We have just used the last of our stored onions from last year and are thinking that this years ones may be big enough to start pulling and using?? We have been watering the veg plot every week whereas in previous years we have not done so this time of year. The spring has been so dry especially here in East Anglia and although we did have a day of showers last weekend the ground is still extremely dry and most of the water butts are empty again.
Onions doing well
Will a windsock put of the pigeons??
We now have a new addition to our veg plot- a spinning windsock as you can see in this photo. The idea is something bright that spins around in the wind might put the pigeons off from landing in the veg plot and ravishing our crops.
Will it work- well we shall have to wait and see,
The spinning windsock
A couple of weeks ago when I was thinning out the cabbages I have too many so I planted out the spare ones directly under the new windsock to see if the pigeons would take them. I did not take any chances with the the others ones though- they were caged as were the peas!!
I can report that 2 weeks on those sacrificial cabbages are still there and largely untouched- I think a slug may have had a few nibbles but most are fine (and no I don’t expect the windsock to stop slugs!). Perhaps I should try a pea plant out in the open as well to see how that fares.
It has been quite breezy in the last 2 weeks so the windsock has been spinning away merrily and this I think does help deter the pigeons as I have not seen any pigeons flying out of the veg plot as I approach. On a calm day I don’t think it will do much good at all though. Thankfully the smaller birds- robin etc seem to totally ignore it and carry on hopping in and out to catch grubs and worms.
The windsock itself we brought from ebay with a fibreglass pole (a carp fishing pole- without eyes). Not sure how long it will last, but it looks good!! It is fairly quiet when spinning- it may have been better if it made more noise to deter the pigeons and we do not have any close neighbours to worry about.
Filed under Non specific, Vegetable plot | Comment (0)May 2011- things are starting to spring up!!
Pea- variety Twinkle
6th May 2011- edited and pictures added now.
Hi I have been planting out my pea plants.
April 2011 Spring is here….
In Norfolk we’ve had 2 weeks of warm weather and very little rain. The soil has warmed up nicely and so we’ve been busy sowing and thanks to VegetableSeeds.net we have loads of seeds to keep us busy.
Last years purple sprouting broccoli have been producing spears. We have had enough for 2 meals so far. Not bad considering they were looked very sad during the winter after the severe cold had damaged them. Even the plants that lost all their leaves have re-sprouted and are doing well. It was tempting to pull them up over winter as they looked so bad but as we did not need the ground for anything else I decided to leave them be and it has paid off. At £10 a kg in Sainsbury’s the Purple sprouting broccoli is well worth growing your own.
- Purple sprouting broccoli protected from the pigeons
Yesterdays job was to get the seed potatoes in the ground. They have been chitting in the shed for the last 4-5 weeks. We have some second earlies called ‘Kestrel’ and as we have not grown these before it will be interesting to see how they come out. I prepared the ground by first digging out a trough and then adding a thin layer of our own home made compost mixed with chopped comfrey leaves and grass cuttings.
Preparing the ground for the seed potatoes
I first tried this last year and it worked a treat for the maincrop potatoes (King Edwards) so am going to prepare the ground like this for all the potatoes this year. We have a comfrey patch and unending supply and grass cuttings and a healthy supply of compost. I even added some nettle leaves as well…
Lots to Sow…. in the potting shed we have been sowing white cabbge, peas, sweetpeas, various herbs, sweetcorn, spagetti squash. The Cape gooseberry seeds I had sown 4 weeks ago have finally sprouted- well 5 of them have so hopefully we shall get one healthy plant to try-this is an experiment this year.
Outside I have sown purple carrots, sugarsnax carrots, the onion sets are planted out (after starting them in pots so as the birds could not pull out the sets from the ground). The carrots and onions I grow in interleaved rows to help protect each other against their respective flies. I also have sown some onion seeds (Rijnsberger) which unexpectedly came free with my order from vegetableseeds.net and some crimson red spring onions (which I thought might look attractive).
I have sown some lettuce (iceberg and mixed babyleaf) and some leeks. The spinach I had sown a couple of weeks ago is sprouting.
Tomatoes are doing really well in the conservatory and the first lot of plants are 6″ high now.
Mid March -weeding already!
What a beautiful day it has been today- after the early frost had gone the temperature went up and up- definately a garden day today. I started by weeding in the veg plot. Its amazing how many weeds are already establishing themselves so I dug and hoed them out before they go crazy.
Second job was to tie up the raspberry cane supports as part of them had collapsed over the winter. The supports a nothing elaborate- just hazel sticks, of which we have plenty- tied with string- it seems to have worked the last few seasons. Once the supports were secured I then tied in the canes and thinned out some which had strayed to far away. Then its hoping for another bumper crop as last years was excellent.
The check on the onions sets. I put a few in the ground a couple of weeks ago but the blackbirds keep pulling them out. I saw on gardeners world last week that Monty Don was putting th onion sets in pots to get them going so I copied the idea- at least they can get some roots down before they go outside so that the bords can’t pull then out so easily. The few in the garden that have started to shoot are fine- its just the bare sets that are repeatedly being pulled up.
We then decied to visit the local nursery looking for lavender plants- none were available and looking on line we shall have to wait until May to get decent ones. Instead a was tempted by stawberry plants. I did have some in planters but they were the small alpine type. They had self seeded and filled the pot but the yield was so poor that I did not think it worth continuing with them in the pots so I dug them out. Amazing rootballs on the plants so I saved them and have replanted them elsewhere. The strawberry planters now have their new plants in- just 1 in each at an extravagent bt £1 a plant!
Filed under Fruit, Vegetable plot | Comments (2)March 2011
2011- another year starts for our veg and fruit growing.
So far the veg plot looks rather bleak
. Up to know we have not really grown any winter veg so this year I brought some winter cabbage and winter lettuce from vegetableseeds.net. In the picture are last years parnsips that we have not dug up yet -they are re-spouting now. The variety ws White Gem and my husband who is the parsnip eater likes this variety better than the tender and true ones we grew last year. But we do have rather more than he needed for 1 year- I had sown the whole pack last year as the seeds do not keep, but it really was too many for us.
In previous years I have dugthe whole plot. This time I mulched it heavily with our own ‘home-made’ compost in most of the plot. I did plant some green manure which I will dig in- see below.
winter green manure- field beans
Milla tomato plants
Fruit trees galore!
In 2009 we set about growing fruit and veg seriously.
In the winter of 2009 we purchased fruit trees:
Apples- Katy, Wocester Pearman, Sunset, Pixie, winter Gem, redsleeves, greensleeves
Pears: Invincible, Concorde, Doyenne du Comice, Beure Hardy, Conference
Plums: Victoria x2, Violetta, Jubilee, Opal x2
Cherry: Stella x3.
We had two loses- 1 of the Stella cherries died and the Concorde pear never came to life and has been replaced with a Bramley Apple.
So far (spring 2011) we have had no fruit yet from the cherries or plums (well one plum last summer!) but have had several apples from the Katy and Worcester Pearman which were the first trees we put in. We had some superb conferece pears from a tree we brought locally and a few Beure du comice pears (Lidl tree). Th emore exotic varieties we brought mailorder and these were tiny trees that have not done so well as the cheaprer trees we got from Lidl’s and local nurseries and half the cost. We are hoping for a crop this year- we shall see. In 2009 all the young fruit were destroyed by a freak hailstorm in June.
There was already an established cooking apple in the from garden which produced copius fruit the first 2 years we were here and then just lost all its leaves and has died.
More sucessful to date has been the raspberries. We planted Glen Moy and Malling Jewel varieties in 2009 and last year had copious quantities of raspberries. Luckliy they freeze well.
My husband has just come back from Lidl’s with 6 more fruit trees- 2 each of cherry, plum and conference pears which we will have to find space for.
The cooking apple tree when it was healthy
2008- The first job in March of that year was to put up a rabbit proof fence. As my husband does not do things in halves- this was not just a basic fence and ended up looking looking quite smart. We were reluctant to bury the wire into the ground as is often recommended, but instead we decided to surround the outer perimeter with gravel hoping the rabbits would not want to dig into the gravel and under the fence. 3 years on and the strategy has worked- no burrowing rabbits and the veg plot is safe- from rabbits at least. Pigeons- well that’s another problem altogether..
First crops 2008- spinach and broad beans
- 2008- first job- a rabbit prrof fence around the veg plot.Summer 2008
