The harvest continues to come in and be delicious. Here’s a quick photo tour:
The patch in the sunshine. Idyllic, no?
A pumpkin begins…
Harvest. One plant worth of Lapland potatoes, a smallish yellow courgette and a fresh batch of Rhubarb, delightfully pink.
A tomato plant jungle!
Cucumbers in progress!
Our garlic drying – only one of the cloves I planted failed!
The Lapland potatoes in particular were a fantastic result. We’re getting about 1.5kg of new potatoes with each plant (we had five seed pots), and they work in every meal context – soft, creamy and delicious. We’re going to have to get out to Finland again next spring to pick up some new seed potatoes as think I’ll struggle to keep them fresh over winter otherwise!
I do wish I’d picked up the books earlier. Paul & Rach gave us Dr Hessayon’s seminal vegetable and herb grower book, and Lilt and Jason gave us an epic gardener’s bible. Both are filled with tips I should have noted earlier in the season that would have boosted our – tomato crop in particular – dramatically. Still, can’t complain about the results for our first year of veg production!
I’m going to bring in some awesome crops this week.
Specifically:
- Another batch of cucumbers
- Some new potatoes
- The first cut of rhubarb
- At least two courgettes
Tomatoes continue to be on the grow and the two remaining apples on my young tree are looking juicy. Let’s hope they last the rest of the growing season…
The garden is doing really well – we’ve eaten our first two cucumbers out of the greenhouse (delicious- Emily especially thought so) and baby peppers and courgettes are beginning to make an appearance. The cucumbers are wonderful – big, juicy, fresh, softer than commercial varieties and sweeter, too.
The apple tree has shed most of its fruit – unable to sustain them, presumably, as it continues to bed in – but that’s for the best, I hope. The tomatoes are yet to fruit but are flowering with wild abandon. The coriander has taken an unexpected journey skyward.
The potato plants are HUGE.
Looking forward to the harvest this year :-).
The garden’s doing well – a quick produce update:
- All our Lapland potatoes have sprouted and will get buried under another layer of soil and manure compost this week
- Our cucumber plants are flowering!
- We’ve germinated a couple of yellow courgette plants, which will go in soon
- Our chilli seeds aren’t coming up yet, but we’re still vaguely hopeful
- We’ve planted aubergine in the greenhouse, and strawberries in the strawberry pot – both shop bought rather than from seed
- Carrot seeds have gone in the ground – no joy as yet
- We’ve relocated the rhubarb as it was too shaded where it was. It’s struggling to thrive.
- The other courgette plant is coming along
- The potatoes in the planter are growing like crazy!
- The tomatoes are getting tall, but no flowers as yet
- Tonnes of nascent blueberries, apples and plums on those trees
- The olive tree is growing but not fruiting as yet
We’ve got another batch of seeds that need to go in and I have to patch and plant some new grass to help the garden recover from the Fiskars session, but on the whole its really all coming together nicely.
Cucumber plants doing well, as are tomatoes – in bags in greenhouse now. Pepper plant bought from garden centre and in a bag too; courgette and rhubarb in the main plot. New potatoes from garden centre sprouted like maniacs and grown to top of planter, buried in soil. Batch of Finnish potatoes – chitted and planted. Apple and plum trees – in early stage of fruiting, despite dimnuitive size. Looking good.
Everything else – still undecided. Chilli, sweetcorn, carrots… all on the agenda. Any recommendations or good plants gleefully accepted.
Topped off day 17 of Juneathon with another 80 sit-ups/crunches, and kicked off day 18 with 90. I’m not sure the Juneathon judges will be that impressed.
Knee still tentative so no running or cycling. Stir-crazy-ness is killing me – I want to run! – but Sensei Paul says it is sensible to rest and recover, so I will remain calm. Hoping that runs can resume next week. May need to limit myself to a max of 20 miles per week rather than the 30 I did before this injury kicked in – doc seemed to think it was a bit much to go from running 0 miles per week to 30 miles per week in 3 months, but hey – I was really enjoying it! Damnit.
Speaking of which, visit Sensei Paul’s mini-guest post in this comment, in which he reports on his 5k attempt (did he make it in sub-17 minutes?) and talks about his latest garden produce – garlic scape!
Armand David's personal weblog: dadhood, technology, running, media, food, stuff and nonsense.
