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

The latest article for the Romford Recorder was released last week and you can read it below. I deal with most of what has been happening on the plot in the article other than mentioning the ongoing battle with weeds! I wondered if the very cold snap we had in winter would have killed many weed seeds but going by my plot that has not been the case; honestly I think I have more weeds than ever. I can only assume this is down to the very dull and wet spring we have had followed by the relatively nice conditions of late encouraging growth.  One job I have undertaken recently not mentioned in the newspaper editorial is to take up the old garden path that I had, put down by my Father many moons ago, and create a new Barbecue Patio halfway down the garden. I have re-used the most of the slabs taken up from the path to create the Barbecue  Patio so the only cost was for sand and cement and a fair amount of hard graft! The turf lifted to allow the patio to be laid was used to fill in the rathe

I have been busy in the Greenhouse of late. The soil in the Greenhouse works harder than perhaps any other soil on my patch and I do from time to time take some out of the beds and replace with new compost; I pretty much exclusively grow Tomatoes in the Greenhouse and they are greedy plants. A job I do every year is replenish the soil. I have added a good helping of 'pot ash', actually ash I have saved from the Chimenea and Barbecue, Chicken Manure pellets and a good sprinkling of Blood, Fish and Bone. Each is added in turn and dug in adding all sorts of nutrients back into the soil. I leave for a week or so and then the Tomato seedlings are planted into their final growing places.  Suttons tempted me in with an email offer recently and I have another five  Tower Lily Pretty Woman  bulbs on their way to me as I write. It is a bit late to be planting Lily bulbs, those already in the White Border are around a foot tall, but at the special price of £2.99 for the five I could not r

  I have talked before about how you simply  can’t  rush Mother Nature and quite a lot on my plot is  somewhat behind  where I would expect it  to be by late April. In years gone by  I  have had Runner Beans and Peas quite well  established  on the Vegetable Patch by late March but this year  I  only got the  seedlings  planted out  over the Easter weekend ,  the cold nights dragging on into April . Law of the sod of course meant no sooner were the young seedlings out than we had a hail storm the next day and now, less than a week later, we have a yellow weather earning for high winds! The poor seedings are looking a bit bedraggled already but all being well will survive but the wind is whipping across the garden as I write; the bamboo screening down one side of the garden may well take off at some point!  The Cherry Tree in my garden is often in bloom in early  April  but the buds  have  remained fir mly shut  a nd  even now  the y  are only just beginning to  show signs of  open ing