to ripen tomatoes

my little kitchen drawers are just the right size to fit a seed tray, where the tomatoes can ripen. 

after a dismal, cold and wet summer, they are just sitting in the greenhouse and not ripening at all, I've been brining in a hanfull every coupleof days to ripen and eat. now i'm just about to collect in another seed tray full and that will be all of them. 

there have been some nice broad beans to munch on , they are nearly finished now. little turnips early on, and there are nice leeks waiting to get bigger before eating.

not much success with anything else this year.
 

todays vegetable garden and greenhouse

a small harvest, some peas, beets, parsnips, turnip,  tiny courgettes and flower, cucumbers, kale, chard, spinach, greens, 

I'm always grateful for what grows. I'll eat them, with some bought potatoes, for dinner.

weary of the weather

I've bought a set of  Lister Star Clippers, so Quince has just had her fourth clip, its surprising how fluffy she gets very quickly. there's not been much nice weather recently, its not particularly cold, just damp and drizzly, not keen on going out riding, can't get anything done in the garden.
 

 

a dinners worth of vegetables. , two yellow beetroot, two good size carrots and two tiny, one long parsnip hiding under the big carrot... a long skinny leek..  tied it in a circle to fit it into the photo, and some chard leaves. I've still a few tomatoes ripening in a drawer, and there's probably more dinners out in the garden, not a lot though its nice to have what comes.

rain rain rain

yipee... there are two aubergines, just about three inches long, i'll let them fatten up for a few days , then eat them.. lol. there are also a few sweet peppers about the size of my thumbnail, hope they get to eating size soon. both aubergine and peppers in the greenhouse and are infested with greenfly...

this is a lemon cucumber and about as big as you want them, this one and two smaller ones made it into a pasta salad yesterday.

the constoluto tomato monster !! most of them are single ones, this seems to be three squashing together! all the tomato plants now have fruit on them, but not anywhere near ripe. I'm cutting off all the extra growth now, just let ripen whats already there.

the courgette planted outside was decimated by slugs, this is a second planting, kept in the greenhouse in a bucket, its just started to flower so I hope it will produce . I'm glad it was kept inside as the second planting of pumpkin again was decimated... even with slug nematodes applied...

this is a sparrowhawk, sitting on the roof of a house opposite, probably the reason there are very few little birds to be seen anywhere.... 

after a too hot two weeks its now been thunderstorms and heavy rain for about four days, I got the front grass cut yesterday but the back is thicker and too wet... it'll have to wait till it drys up during the week.. if it drys up, this is typical of when I have a week off work, the weather does not play fair. I got some of the blackthorn branches removed from the back hedge yesterday, the main part of them will need a chainsaw massacre.... if my friend has time to do that, there's so much big stuff needing tamed all over the garden.

as I was typing , saw the sparrowhawk  fly over the top of the gardens.

good eating...

 at last some tomatoes, a constoluto type, squiggly, lovely. theres a few tomatoes now on all the plants. 

I've harvested a couple of handfulls of sugarsnap peas, eaten immediatley. and I've picked a few of the savoy cabbage leaves, leaving the plant to still grow, just cooked with potatoes and butter. lovely. also eating chard , kale  and collard leaves.

April

 

todays pickings of purple sprouting broccolli and chives, about to be made into an omlette and eaten for dinner. 

I'm tired out from work, weary of the changing weather. 

following are temperatures and what's been sown in the greenhouse, as typed into my garden diary adn copied and pasted to here.

22/3/21                18.7        11.8        3.8

27/3/21                19.1        9.9          2.2          sown  ===some more Cipolla Rossa Di Tropea Onion as they just don’t look like germinating, Blumen Sapore Italiano. === Pepper Largo De Reus Pairal, More Veg.=== Pepper Quadrato  Asti Rosso, Blumen Sapore Italiano===Carrot Ideal, baby type.. for little first carrots.Suttons===Courgette Black Beauty===Pumpkin Small Sugar===Cucumber Lemon===Leaf Beet Perpetual Spinach, More Veg===Spinach Giant Nobel===

31/3/21                21.2        9.7          4.2

2/4/21                   21.9        2.1          0.3

3/4/21                   27.3        21.9        2.1

4/4/21                   20.1        12.8        1.5          sown === Cauliflower Romanesco, Suttons === Cauliflower Snowball Y Improved, Sow n Grow===  Broccolli Continuity,Suttons === Broccoli Walthan, Sow n Grow=== Kale Vates Blue Scotch Curled, Sow n Grow=== Cabbage or Kale Cavalo Nero di Toscana,  Blumen Sapore Italiano  === Cabbage Winter Jewel, Suttons === Cabbage Savoy Perfection, Sow n Grow=== Green Pepper Pepperone Friggitello, Blumen Sapore Italiano=== Chard Ruby Red, Sow n Grow === Chard Lucullus, Sow n Grow=== Collards Vates, Sow n Grow=== Brussells Sprouts Long Island Improved, Sow n Grow === Arugula, Sow n Grow===  Anise, Sow n Grow===Fennel, Sow n Grow===

March

hyacinths, smell wonderful.

snow on the hills, weather is changeable with some warm days and some not

a good day, out riding.

in the garden, the first little daffodil to flower, its about six inches high, and the purple sprouting broccoli, making a nice colour and providing some to eat, I eat the leaves too, and the last leek, which is a skinny one, but tasty all the same.

''rain rain go away...'' reposted from 7 years ago.

I love the uspside down reflections in the drops.

the mystery plant turns into a Knifophia, its a tight clump which probably needs to be separated out a bit more as there was only this one flower. this was a rescue from a garden that was bought by someone who wanted to changed things. my other rescue was a Jacobs Ladder in white, now I'll need to get a blue one too....

this is a cultivated vegetable bed, honest... looks a bit like a jungle!! this is peas and beans, but there is only one bean stalk...in the foreground, I planted them twice and didn't get any growth from them at all. this photograph looks a funny shade/tone, it seems greener in real life, but its earlyish and very gloomy cloud. also I think my camera is possibly on its way out.... the disadvantage of electronic stuff I suppose. or maybe its my computer screen? also possibly on its way out... it took about half an hour to get into my emails this morning.

top right is snap pea Sugar Ann which I've been eating for a couple of weeks. not quite ready for eating are left-Alderman is which is the very tall pea, it was trying to grow along the washing line but got blown off and beaten down in our lovely summer weather.... and right-Waverex. they'll be ready soon.

This post was made on the 13th August 2011. Seven years ago but seems longer. I no longer have the garden or a good camera to record things with. I'm sitting inside with  my view of chimney pots on the roof of the nextdoor house and looking at the rain. Very heavy rain yesterday and today , so nothing going on to post about . Enjoy old memories, glad I have them to look back on. 

days go by

my sycamore tree turns colour and decorates the garden with its leaves. some nice cold days however more often is wet and cold and windy. not so nice now that I have no car, it failed its MOT and was scrapped two days later after the 'man who welds things' said NO. its a shame, I liked the wee Fiesta as it always went, never broke down, it was cheap to insure and run too. and I have no money to buy another decent car. I have been traveling by bus, well, there's an experience and about another two hours added onto already long working days.

here's a fairy ring in the garden

nearly the last of the lovely garden veg, this lot got turned into veggy chilli, very nice it was too.

there was one row of cabbages that 'did not do', and I kept looking at them and thinking I should just take them out....welll I am glad I didn't.....they were not cabbages, this is lovely calabrese! I froze them and gave the stalks and leaves to Abbey, she will get the stalks from the sprouts soon, and then the broccoli...it may go on for a while yet. there are still carrots to come out of the ground and apart from the leeks that is probably it for all my harvest this year. its been not bad even with all the neglect.....probably out playing with the pony instead....

definately winter!

a very unkempt garden, thought it translates to photo very well, look at the long shadow of the greenhouse in the low winter sun, and this is before midday...it was a nice morning so another veggy bed was tidied and turned over with some home compost(one at a time due to sore back), two potatoes, two parsnips and one turnip being the total of todays harvest, now being stewed for my dinner.

Smokey Tiptoes gets onto the doorstop for the second time...yesterday this was as far as she got, today she made it into the garden for one minute....then she decides life as a house cat must be too good and gets back up the stairs pronto!! I'm glad she sees the house as a place of safety, and that she did not bolt away.

winter tidying

I've started to move the pots off my doorstep and put them in Billy's coldframes to keep them through the winter, if it gets really bad I can out their covers on for extra protection.

my leeks are doing good and there have been some nice pots of soup already, thanks Wildside for the seeds!!

a little rose doing its best in the sun, its blown away now...

a collection of autumn multi-coloured leaves, its a never ending thing... I used to keep them separate to compost but am too busy just now so have stuffed them in with everything else.

autumn closing in

This is Ruaraidh, his mum Sally is starting a new blog called Ruaraidhstails. Sally has been a great facilitator for Permaculture in Scotland, organising courses and keeping tabs on us all.

this is a 'gone to flower' red lettuce, it makes for an attractive plant but is now bitter to eat, I give them to Bella(the guinea pig) who is staying while my mum is on holiday.
how different this red sprout looks to
this one which is in a different bed....the caterpillers liked this one!1
my pumpkin harvest!
and the forlorn empty greenhouse!! it's still to get its good clean out and most of the pots/trays will be washed in the bath and then go into my attic till spring when they are used again.

I have just had soup made with homegrown veg, potatoes, onions, turnip, parsnip, carrots and leeks. so that was good!!

er...tomato!!!

from the top the usual 'catface' of the Purple Calabash tomato
underneath its a sort of tomato mutant!!

I'll give it another couple of days to ripen up on the window sill and then see how it tastes, probably great!

waiting for some sunshine. . . .

slowly ripening black Nyagous, mmmmm......
this is a tomato called Purple Calabash, er, not the most attractive tomato! its very tasty, I had some last year.
not ripe yet but just to show the lovely heart shape of the Oregon Cherry tomato, the seeds for these were a gift from Wildside. they are very tasty, I have harvested and eaten quite a few of these, none lasting long enough to get their picture taken.....
this gladioli has been coming up for a couple of years now, the original corm handed in from a neighbor.
and one of three surviving sunflowers, I think I planted about forty seeds, and none of them have reached over two feet high, this flower is about two inches across, thats because we have had no sun.

whoopeee! pumpkin stew!! one of these is Small Sugar and one is Invincible, labels lost so not sure which is which!
and the other green one, this is as close as I could get through the tangle of plant.

whooohooo!!

clutched here in my grubby hand is lovely black tomato called Nyagous. very tasty it was too!!

days go by

well the days seem to be flying by, a lot of it seems unproductive. think I've seen about three days of sun this 'summer'. its a bit depressing!! harvesting: potatoes, carrots, beetroot, lettuce, peas, mange-tout, courgettes, tomatoes, beans, onions. in flower: lavendar, goats-rue, monarda, sedum, geraniums, pelargoniums, begonia, hostas, sweet-peas, lychnis, marigold, diggers speedwell, cone flower, carnations, astrantia, clematis, persicaria and the tall purple thing, sure it has a name! also the yellow thing, which begins with a p. . . .ha. . memory loss. . .
I have just spent a weekend with Katy at a natural horsemanship clinic run by Quantuum Savvy from Australia, what they must think of our summer weather I don't know! it was freezing last August when they were here. I have learned so much my brain is a bit fried now.

sweet tooth?

this is my gooseberry crop, variety something with red in the name, I think it looks like a bowl of glass marbles. they've been simmered down, and I add a can of condensed milk and a tub of double cream. gooseberry fool. yum.

this holiday

a few days off work, nice and dry today so I'm not so much gardening as waging 'damage control' on borders and spaces which have not been weeded since last year!!!!
vegies being overgrown by 'italian aster', a lettuc left to go to seed, but I didn't realise it would take over!!
still, out from underneath things, the produce from a bucket grown potato, yum!