Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

I am currently enjoying a bit of a glut on the Tomato front, no bad thing, and find myself experimenting with a number of recipes; that said an oven baked Beefsteak Tomato is still one of my favourite guilty pleasures. The   Buffalo Steak Tomatoes  from the Greenhouse have been a roaring success, baked, fried, in a salad, on a burger or in a sandwich I have used them in multiple ways for breakfast, lunch and dinner recently and these will definitely be grown again in the future - absolutely brilliant. The  Gigantomo  variety are also cropping strongly with a number of large fruits on the plants I have allowed them to grow on. I have a couple of very large fruits on one plant I deliberately left only a few tomatoes on but no world record breaker.  The Tomato varieties I am growing outside on the veg patch following the disaster that was the Limoncito and Black Cherry seedlings failing on me are now of course the  Yellow Pear  and  Pink  Brandywine   and these are going well I am happy t

Signs that spring is on the way are all around the garden. Crocus are just coming into bloom, Daffodils are popping up all over, the pots filled with bulbs are just days away from the first flowers, it was a lovely place to be this weekend. I also made some time just to sit and enjoy the garden, from the relative warmth of the conservatory, and half-an-hour or so was lost just watching the Sparrows, Starlings and Wood Pigeons squabbling on the bird feeders.  I also spent some time in one of my happy places this weekend, the potting shed, busying myself sowing Leek and Runner Bean seeds into fibre pots. The two seed trays of Beans, eight 8cm pots on each, are currently in the dining room by the French Doors to get as much warmth and light as possible with the two trays of Leeks, fifteen 6cm pots on each, on the table in the conservatory tucked up warm under propagator lids. Spring really is just around the corner.  Cheers 🍺

The seed order for the year has arrived from Thompson & Morgan. As is often the case I have probably over order and will now spend a few hours mulling over plans of what to sow where . I have also been gifted a ‘sack of seeds’  at Christmas  containing all sorts of wonderful things  that I am now also trying to work out which to grow this year and where, hopefully, I can squeeze them in – in  short,  I need an extra half acre or so to the garden to fi t  it all in!    The vegetable seed order for the coming growing season consists of  Runner Bean  Benchmaster  a real success story in 2021 for me so on the list again ,  Tomato Buffalo  S teak , new to me   and  I am hoping for some nice juicy toms from this variety ,  Tomato  Gigantomo  another I have grown before ,   as the name suggests this plant can grow huge tomatoes of 2lb  - 3lb each  and   Tomato  L i moncito   that fruits lovely yellow  mini plum tomatoes and was   another big su cc ess for me in 2021 so back on the list. I