All going a bit farming today

View out of the front window this evening: can tell we live in a principally agricultural area. Think this fella had fun trying to get past the cars parked on the street. Coming to something when you can recognise the engine sound of a combine harvester.

Today's harvest

We are now harvesting lots of tomatoes from our garden:

The beefsteak ones (Marmande) are just beginning to ripen so hopefully will be picking those soon. Here's a monster Oak Leaf lettuce:

We also harvested loads of beans and 3 courgettes, but I forgot to take a photo of those!

Pink Fir Apple update (for future reference)

Note to self: turns out that leaving pink fir apple in until later on makes the crop far better: have a bunch of potatoes from a couple of plants this afternoon:

This was a good 3kg or so of spuds, should keep us going. The duddo of the day was this fellow:

They're all generally much larger than last time I harvested these, so much easier to work with. Still not sure these will be worth growing next year, but if we do certainly worth giving them plenty of time to grow...

Black Seeded Simpson

Apparently Black Seeded Simpson is the name of this enormous lettuce that I picked today along with some beans, courgettes and onions:

No idea why it has black in its name as the leaves are meant to be bright green! This lettuce was grown from Mr Fothergill's seed entitled Lettuce Headed Mixed. It's a good job we eat a lot of salad as there are lots more lettuce on the way:

The two rows on the right are Lobjoits Cos and the row on the left was grown from the Headed Mixed seed (some of which have been eaten!) We have lots more lettuce seedlings nearly ready to go out too:

These were sown on the 2nd August along with some radish, Cherry Belle, which are now ready for harvesting:

I can't believe how quickly these have matured!The radish were grown in a large container under Enviromesh. Note the minimal flea beetle damage to the leaves due to the Enviromesh. It has'nt stopped the slugs from having a little nibble at some of them though!

Harvest Wednesday

This pic is getting a bit repetitive now :

The above is what we are currently harvesting every 2-3 days from our garden. The tomatoes on the left are Sun Baby, Garden Pearl and Gardeners Delight. Garden Pearl are our favourites, with thin skins and a lovely sweet flavour. Apparently they are "ideal for hanging baskets". Well ours are about 5ft tall and laden with fruit! I have had to nip out the tops as they have reached the top of our fence! The cayenne chillis are ripening much faster than Graeme can eat them so some are now drying in the airing cupboard. We are still waiting for the other chilli varieties to ripen...

Down the allotment today we harvested this:

A steady number of beans (only runner beans today), plus a couple of courgettes and the first of the allotment tomatoes - 2 Gardeners Delight and one beefsteak variety Marmande.

Whilst out on a bike-ride we took a trip down memory-lane and visited our old allotment that we had back in 2009-2011:

The plot is completely overgrown and looks like it may not have been cultivated since we gave it up. On closer inspection I noticed that the very invasive weed mares tail had also moved in. We did manage to pilfer a few Autumn Bliss raspberries off the plot though!

Main harvest: allotment (mostly green)

We are continuing to harvest courgettes, runner beans and lettuce at a rate of knots - decided it would be fun to photograph for future reference some of the leaves of the lettuces:

These are each in excess of 9" across, two complete plants is something of the order of a cubic foot of lettuce. Then we got a load more courgettes:

Getting to feel like I have courgette-based nightmares (this is not the whole harvest for the day) however soup seems to finish them off satisfactorily. Then we have the beans:

Once again these are coming in thick 'n' fast - possibly at too great a rate to eat in real time. Star of the show today is however #1 squash:

Should be a bit bigger and more butternut squash shaped but we decided to harvest it as we have loads. Probably destined for a roasting.ƒ

Garden harvest

Nom nom nom too busy eating produce to realise should have photographed it first, got the cucumber in time though. Big tom on the left is a moneymaker, most of the rest are garden pearl (actually pretty good, "compact bush" variety which in our hands grew to 6 feet +) and sunbaby yellow tomatoes. More cayenne chillies in the middle there.

Ate the tiny bhut jolokia this lunchtime, didn't taste of much :o(

Harvest day (courgette overload)

Currently "enjoying" a glut of courgettes - picked another half dozen this morning along with some splendid lettuce and more beans:

Then on our return from the allotment picked some fruit from the garden:

(about 300g of blueberries again) and

So we're doing OK for various colours of fruit at the moment! Nothing much else to report from the plot really - have had plenty of rain lately so everything is ticking over just fine. Could do with more recipes for "lots of courgette and bean" type meals!

Chilli Update

So it turns out the last comment I made in the previous post was a little off: we do have a Bhut Jolokia however it's a little on the small side:

OK, it's a lot on the small side - it should be two to three inches long and it's under an inch but it's ripe. Will taste it tomorrow, should be interesting. In other updates the chilli plants are generally doing well:

These are the Zimbabwe Black, Trinidad Perfume, Bhut Jolokia (top row) and Moruga Scorpion and Joe's Super Long on the bottom row (much taller plants). Here's the whole happy bunch back in their special greenhouse:

Getting to the point where we could do with a "proper" greenhouse (6'x12' stand up in glass house perhaps? Will need a new house to go with it...) and I guess one to grow tomatoes in as well would be useful. Think some of these plants will need to be grown indoors over the winter to get some of the later fruit to ripen. Meanwhile we're getting a couple of cayenne a day which is keeping us going.

Fruity harvest

Harvested some fruit from the garden this morning - some tomatoes and cayenne chillies:

And about 300g of blueberries:

We've been doing very well for these lately - considering we're getting a harvest like this every few days from a single bush. Also went to the allotment to harvest courgettes yesterday (in the rain!) and got a few along with some beans (runner and dwarf):

No idea what we will do with the marrow on the left... soup? Got to the allotment today as well to harvest some potatoes, more runner beans and a couple of lettuces (no pictures). The potatoes are sarpo mira and pink fir apple - the latter are getting less nobbly the longer we leave them, beginning to be a little less silly to work with. Found the PFA's are nice sautéed. By a happy accident we visited Abingdon this morning and found there was a chilli fiesta so I bought some more scorpion sauce. Just a shame none of our really hot peppers are coming to much :o( though we're doing very well for cayenne :o)

Buzz

Not really allotment, but we have a large lavender bush out in the back garden: yesterday it was absolutely full of bees, must have been hundreds on there. Here's a couple of them:

Quite happy with the pictures given they were taken on a phone. Nice to see the bees out there given all of the worry about them in the news...

Allotment update

In the quiet "coasting" phase of the year right now: nothing much is going on up there at the moment other than weeding, watering, things growing and occasionally being harvested. By way of an overview we're looking like this at the moment:

Though will probably harvest some more of the spuds later today. Things of note? The leeks are making good progress:

The butternut squash are showing a decent amount of fruit (though don't know if they will all make it to a decent size) and the courgettes are of course working on covering the whole of the Earth's surface:

Other than that not much to report. One amusing thing this morning: a watering can was not working so well, and when I took the rose off I found this chappie:

That can't have been comfortable! Decided to name it "Gastroplug" and pop it in the compost heap.

Spud report

Having now harvested some of each variety (and finished most) thought it would be worth summing up how they came out... Though have not yet eaten any sarpo mira, will have to wait on this one...

Pentland Javelin: traditional new potato, moderate yeild - floury, so good to boil as regular boiled potatoes, not much use for baking etc. Somewhat prone to slug damage.

Lady Cristl: good, waxy potato, cooked nicely and fairly resistant to slug damage. Not good yield mind.

Estima: often available in shops as a new / salad potato or later as a baking potato. Good yield and nice tasting spuds. Somewhat prone to slug damage.

Pink Fir Apple: fun potato but annoying to wash! Think I overcooked them this evening as they came out a bit hard. Modest crop based on a couple of plants, not too much damage but potatoes small.

Sarpo Mira: not tasted these yet but mixed yield - first plant had a decent crop of nice looking spuds, second only a couple. No damage (but they are famous for blight resistance) and more practical to wash than the PFA's above.

Favourite potato so far? Estima - though this may reflect cooking preferences.

Spuds 'n' critters

Went to do some harvesting today, working onto the main crop spuds now. Thought though it is worth showing the view from the allotment:

This is what you see when you stand on the corner of the site. Nice on a day like today! Ridgeway in the background there. So we harvested some spuds - pink fir apple (weird ugly ones, middle) and sarpo mira (left), along with the inevitable onions, courgette or two, and a lettuce:

 and also some soft fruit:

While up at the plot we planted some lambs lettuce seedlings, which were planted on June 10th (they grow very slowly indeed):

Unfortunately they appear to have experienced some stress as they are a bit mildewy but will see whether they recover:

While up there we also saw a couple of little critters - most interesting is this red grasshopper though Emily's favourite insect (ladybird) and a green grasshopper (at home) and more annoyingly cabbage white caterpillars were also in evidence:

Ugliest potato of the day - yes this is a pink fir apple:

Caulizilla

We harvested our third and last cauliflower today. It was a beauty:

 Here it is stripped of its outer leaves, with our first crop of beans:

Three runner beans and five french beans....not exactly a bumper crop(!) but lots more on the way :-)