Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

And so it begins that wonderful time of the year as the tomatoes begin to ripen. I mentioned recently that the first of the Tiny Tim tomatoes (they are tiny) had begun to ripen, well many of the other varieties I am growing this year are now ripening as well. I spoke at the start of the year about how I planned to grow more tomatoes than ever before and so far so good as they say. As yet none of the four Buffalosteak plants   growing on the outside patch are ripe but I have plenty of fruit on the plants and having grown these before I was always confident they would go well. Also in the outdoor patch are the heirloom variety from Germany Tomato Bloody Butcher . A variety that has Potato like foliage (as Pink Brandywine) my research into this one suggested it would produce crops of golf ball sized fruit with a dark 'blood-red' juice. It reportedly is one of the first varieties to ripen, ripening in only about 60-days, and continues all summer long and I hoped it would be perf

I mentioned in my June article that summer felt as though it was just around the corner and the sun has been shining pretty constantly since. I am not going to complain about that after the winter and spring that we had, but it does bring with it a new set of challenges to be dealt with. We have had a couple of thunderstorms but in general it has been dry and pretty warm. The Barbara Butternut Squash plants are loving the weather and spreading across the vegetable patch at quite a rate, and in fact have outgrown the space allotted them. Luckily the growth spurt on the Squashes coincided with the Pea's coming to and end so I have taken out the Pea plants to give the Squashes some extra room to roam. This year I was once again growing  Pea Bingo  which is  a  dwarf  e arly  m aincrop  variety  growing no higher than about two-and-a-half feet. They cropped well again, though in truth I probably didn't sow enough, and next year I will almost certainly dedicate more room on the p