Main crop potatoes harvested

And yielded 15 kilos!

OK, so another courgette over 700 grams this week.

I think I may have missed a couple too.

Today I harvested 2.2 kilos green toms and 500+ grams of orange/ red ones.

Used 1 kilo of greens for a chutney. Am intending to make a ketchup with rest.

All apart from 2 tiny toms were tigarellas. We had 2 tiny yellow ildis, the only ildis we got.

More!

More missing posts, I've enjoyed the first 2 cobs of super sweet sweetcorn! Unbelievably good!

Oh and almost a kilo more of courgette too!

More yield

I know we've missed recording a little of the harvest, such as a few tomatoes, a couple of courgettes and a handful of carrots.

Today's courgette 524 grams and is going into a courgette-sakka!

:)

Carrots

As well as the courgette haul yesterday we also pulled 3 carrots, two quite large and one tiny. They were soooo misshapen and cracked it was a lot of work to cut away the bad bits without wasting any of the good bits.

Weight before peeling/ cutting away was 120 grams.

Crikey!

Mary-Ann is here to help with the garden again this weekend.

Today we harvested some more yellow courgettes - these really needed to be picked as they were getting rather large AND crowding against each other so much that one had started to rot.

We took 4 of the spherical ones plus 1 large and 2 small regular ones.

The spherical ones came to a whopping 2645 grams and the regulars to 750 grams!

That's 3.5 kilos!

Giant Courgette!

We're starting to get into a proper courgette flood now; I've just harvested the biggest one for dinner, and it weighed in at a whopping 820 grams!

As well as the regular shaped (but yellow) courgettes, our "ball" courgettes are also maturing nicely - I think I saw at least three, tennis-ball sized (and coloured!) fruit waiting to be eaten. What we need now is lots of courgette-based recipes!

Also, a quick update on planting - once we'd harvested the first early potatoes and pulled out the pea plants, the winter Savoy seedlings (which were getting pretty long and weary-looking in the greenhouse) took over their ground.

Recording yields

More harvesting!

Monday 20th July:
Early potatoes 660 grams
Sugarsnaps 110 grams (though some were shelled as a bit far gone)

Wednesday 22nd July
Early potatoes 964 grams
Long yellow courgettes 590 grams
2 teeny parsnips

Saturday 25th July
Early potatoes 6500 grams
Extra red potatoes 300 grams
Plus the peas and sugarsnap plants were shrivelling up so we took off all the rest and shelled them (even the sugarsnaps as the pods were not really edible)
Peas shelled weight 900 grams
Sugarsnaps shelled weight 120 grams

Regular meals from the garden now!

It's all kicking off now!

We had our first two little cherry tomatoes a few days ago and another two yesterday.

Also yesterday, we harvested our first regular peas. Shelled, we collected 238 grams. Delicious! I ate mine raw and Pete had his lightly boiled with chocolate mint and butter.

Today we took another 106 grams of peas from the garden (shelled weight again).

Plus we enjoyed our first courgettes of the year, three beautiful yellow ones. Together, these weighed 828 grams.

We used both the peas and the courgettes in a thai red chicken curry. Wonderful!

A Working Weekend!

Oh thank goodness for Pete's sister, M-A!

As she's done previously, she took Friday off, came to us on Friday night and worked hard on our garden all day Friday and much of Sunday! (We let her take Saturday off!)

Between the two of them, Pete and M-A completely cleared a huge pile of rubble that had gradually amassed to one side of the garden and then flattened the entire area, distributing the extra earth across the rest of the garden. I did minor wheelbarrow duties but the hard work was all theirs!

As well as this, tomato and pepper seedlings were planted into larger pots in the greenhouse with some of the extra tomato seedlings going into the newly cleared beds outside.

We continue to harvest great yields from the sugarsnap plants though the yellowing appearance of a couple of the plants is leading us to wonder whether they're near the end of their productive life already. Neither of us are too sure how long sugarsnaps naturally crop.

Normal pea plants have loooooots of pods hanging from them so we're looking forward to these filling up with fat round peas soon!

Potatoes are, as ever, looking vigorous.

Carrots too are looking fabulous, though one pulled up against my advice, was just too small to consider harvesting them yet.

The courgettes are still looking feeble. The two larger ones do flower frequently but we're not sure any insects are assisting pollenating male to female flowers so we don't know whether the tiny fruits will grow or drop off. The two smaller ones are looking healthier but small for the time of year.

The sweetcorn seems to have had a massive spurt this weekend, so we're hopeful a summer of sun will result in lovely cobs this year.

Incidentally, the rubble clearing unhomed a cute little mouse who is likely the culprit who has been feasting on some of our planting these last couple of years. He's so cute we hope he finds another home in our garden though we won't miss his vegetable thieving ways!

More sugar snap goodness

Since having our first sugar snaps on 6 June we enjoyed another 15 or so pods eaten straight off the plants, right there in the garden, the following weekend.

Then, on Sunday, 21 June, I picked about 300 grams which I made into a salad for lunch: I chopped them raw and mixed with thinly sliced red onion, halved cherry toms, coriander leaves and home-made dressing (olive oil, cider vinegar and honey). DELISH!

Very exciting as we've not grown peas before!

Our first (miniature) harvest

Pete, my mum and I shared a single sugar snap pea pod fresh from the plant today! Beautiful!

Sweetcorn MkII

So we sowed some sweetcorn seeds straight into the ground, in the location the seedlings had been before. This time each one was protected by a clear plastic paper cup - we'd used them to protect carrot seedlings in previous years.

And some general tidying and watering etc.

Total Fail

When I planted out the sweetcorn seedling last weekend, I rather foolishly didn't bother protecting them. "No need", I told my beloved when she suggested I really should put something over them. "Never had any problems with slugs or birds or anything going for sweetcorn."

Obviously the birds were listening. When I went out into the garden this morning, every single one of our sweetcorn seedlings had been uprooted by some thing. I can't even fairly blame my usual targets (the squirrels) because they don't appear to have been dug up; just plucked out of the ground very .... bird like. Grrr.

Still, the seed packet says that May is the perfect month for outdoor sowing, so we'll try that again - this time, with protection!

Sunday Efforts

Buy 3 60L bags of compost for £12 from Burston.

K:
Pull up last 4 spring onions, wash, chop and freeze.
Earth up early potato plants (plus the two errant plants from lost potatoes of previous years)

P:
Weed remaining greenhouse seedlings (Saturday).
Plant sweetcorn seedlings, outside.
Plant two courgette plants from K's mum, outside.
Plant 3 tomato plants into grow bag, in greenhouse, and 3 into pots, in greenhouse for now but maybe to live outside later; plants from K's mum.
Plant out aubergine into larger pot in greenhouse; from K's mum .
Give the older "zuchetti" courgette, also from K's mum, a cane to grow up.

Weekend tasks

Pete planted out maincrop potatos and also created trellis for regular peas.
Oh and we also picked up several small courgette, tom and aubergine plants from my mum.

Weekend Tasks

Carrots seedlings planted out.
A bamboo pole and netting A-frame erected above Sugar Snap Pea seedlings for them to climb up.

Sowings

As well as lots of physical work this weekend, I managed to get around to some more directly crop-related tasks. The early potatoes are now in the ground; I sowed the last of last year's "One Ball" courgettes in some pots, and also started off this year's sweetcorn in our little "just add water" compost pellets.

This evening I rebuilt my cunning anti-bird cover to extend it sufficiently to allow me to sow the second batch of peas. This was initially come carefully placed bricks, part of an old clothes airer and some fleece netting but has now been improved to include more of the old airer, a couple of bamboo poles and some parts from my old (now defunct) compost bin (which, itself was made from an older, defuncter picnic table). Never let it be said I don't recycle.

Some hard slog (but not on my part)!

Pete's sister, M-A, visited this weekend with one of her main aims to help with the garden. Her current flat has a teeny, tiny area and she misses "proper" gardening, so she says. All to our benefit as she enjoys coming over from time to time and getting stuck in to some heavy work in ours!

On Friday she kindly weeded the existing vegetable bed which runs up the length of the lawn (between sheds and greenhouse at back and patio at front by house) on the right side. Pete had dug this over a few weeks back but quite a few weeds had still taken root in the intervening weeks. She was out on her own on Friday as Pete was working and I had some chores to do too but was, she insisted, quite happy out there.

On Saturday she and Pete got stuck in together. Between them, they did a LOT:

Cleared a large area of long unused bed on the left of the garden, one that was choked with some really deep-rooted weeds, some mint we'd planted long ago and all kinds of broken rocks and rubble. The newly cleared area is large enough for both the maincrop potatoes.

Removed an old fencing panel we don't need since it sat against the brick wall of our neighbour's extension anyway. This added a little more space to the newly dug bed and also looks far better.

Eventually we'll cleared the full length on the left, like it is on the right, but there's a huge mountain of rubble (mostly from when the greenhouse and shed were erected last year), a partially submerged "green bin" and various collections of old wood including the fence panel and Pete's old home-made composter (replaced last year with a modern, upright plastic one).

Laid more paving across from the first path (which runs along the right hand bed) to the shed door.

Moved a pile of gravel sat directly on the patio into a large sack of gravel we have left over from the greenhouse floor - we'll use this to fill the gap between greenhouse base and shed base - to stop weeds growing up in there.

Weeded the patio (not been done for years).

Put down a paving slab at the side of the patio, where a few small slabs were removed when the drainage was re-routed back when our conservatory was erected a few years ago.

All in all they did an incredible amount of work! Well done and thanks again to M-A for all her very hard work!

Metres and metres of netting

We picked up 16 metres of netting at Aylett's today which Pete is intending to grow the peas up (supported by bamboo poles). £7.84

Sugar Snaps In!

This weekend past saw only a short stint in the garden from Pete on his own but he did plant out the sugar snap peas straight into the garden, rather than in the greenhouse.

A wee bit more...

We were away for the weekend but went straight out into the garden when we got home on Sunday afternoon.

A little more digging over by Pete means that the one long bed up the right hand side of the garden (looking out from the house) is ready.

I also sieved some more earth and we planted seeds for leeks (musselburgh, left over from last year) and parsnips (white gem). As with last weekend's carrot, tomato and pepper seeds all the seeds were planted in pots, trays and eggboxes in the greenhouse to be replanted outside once seedlings have come up.

Garden Work

Having created a paving path up the left hand side from patio to shed plus some digging over a couple of weeks back, this weekend Pete dug over most of the remaining strip back to the shed, mixing in the compost from the old compost heap and the remnants of last year's grow bags.

I sieved some soil which we then used to plant seeds for our two tomato varieties (Ildi and Tigerella), our carrots (Chantenay Red Cored) and our mini peppers (which I'd saved from peppers we'd bought and enjoyed from Aldi last year).

2009 Purchases!

Purchased 15 Feb 2009:

Courgette - Tristan £1.69
Parnsip - White Gem £1.29
Tomato - Ildi £1.99
Tomato - Tigerella £1.99
Sweetcorn - RHS Ovation F1 £1.99
Carrot - Chantenay Red Cored 99p
Pea - Sugarsnap Ann £2.49
Pea - Hurst Greenshaft £1.99
1 medium bag of potatoes £2.95
contains one first early variety and two maincrops (possibly epicure, majestic and navan)

Also planting

some old lettuce seeds
mini pepper seeds harvested in 2008 from Aldi mini peppers
cabbages
leftover leek seeds (musselburgh)


Oh and we have discovered a harvest of spring onions from last year, that we'd forgotten about! Pulled first one 15th March, will pull rest over coming weeks.

New Year, New Resolution!

Last year was a pretty terrible year, both on the blog and (in some respects) in the garden.

Firstly, an update on where we are now. The greenhouse finally got installed and is a wonderful big space - despite the dreadful weather (which resulted in things like the sweetcorn being an utter failure, with near-constant cloud and rain just as the poor things needed sun) we got a pretty good quantity of tomatoes and peppers out of it. The courgettes and aubergines were less successful, but hopefully we can work out what went wrong this time around!

The onions were something of a disappointment, failing to grow much larger than the sets. The garlic did something very similar, despite being in the ground for a ridiculous amount of time.

The potatoes and carrots were a mixed success. We certainly got a crop, but neither were particularly heavy. The carrots were also very ... 'rustic', as you can see! But they weren't a complete washout, and we ate plenty of (very tasty) carrot and corriander soup and managed to be self-sufficient in potatoes for a few months. Ahh, the advantage of there only being two of us!

In an attempt to keep this thing a little bit more frequently updated, I've added my wife to the author list so even when I'm being rubbish (or "working in the garden", which I've decided will be my excuse this year!) she'll be able to keep things vaguely up to date here.