I’ll come straight to the point. How do you ask your neighbour to ‘pick some veg’ while you’re on holiday, but politely say ‘leave some for me!’?
Our kind neighbour is poised to water our garden while we’re away and I have suggested that he might like to pick some of the Runner Beans, Courgettes, Radishes and French Beans. I don’t mind too much if he has the odd Raspberry too. But he can only have a Tomato if it’s practically falling off the plant! and I’d really like everything else untouched when I get back, specifically the Grapes.
The problem is - how to do I say that without sounding:
- very ungrateful for his help and
- a bit selfish and obsessed with vegetables?
Just a sneaky look at my Crystal Apple Cucumbers. They are one of this year’s successes and are so unlike any cucumber that I’ve ever seen that I can’t stop taking photos of them.
They’re an old Victorian variety and pretty much impossible to find in the shops - which makes growing them all the more rewarding. You grow them in exactly the same way as normal outdoor cucumbers. The plant looks exactly the same except when the fruits form they produce yellow, spiky balls.
They taste the same as regular cucumbers too. The only thing you need to watch is when you pick them. Let them get too big and they tend to be full of seeds. Pick them while they’re still golf-ball sized and they are wonderfully crunchy and sweet.
I’ll definitely be growing this variety again next year.
Success! My Tomatoes are ripe. And I managed to pick these before holiday too. Brilliant. The rest of the year can be rubbish now - I have my Tomatoes. I’m happy.
My Tomatoes are beginning to ripen, yey! I have at least one Tomato nearly ready on all eight plants. That’s a potential Tomato meal before we go on holiday. Well, that’s better than last year. All my Tomatoes were pretty much green and hard at the end of Aug 2008.
This year, we’re heading towards ripeness with no…okay a tiny bit of… blight detected. I’m confident though that with the watering hand of our neighbour, and the fact that I’m growing a blight resistant variety, we’ll be returning to bucket loads of juicy, ripe Tomatoes. If not - I’ve decided to have a mini-breakdown.
What possessed me to book our holiday smack bang in the middle of Tomato season, I don’t know? Maybe it was lure of a French bargain and a heated pool? In any case, I’m hoping that Ferline will do me proud and help me on the road to Tomato recovery.
In an attempt to ripen a few early I’m trying the ‘rotting banana skin under the plant’ trick. I’ve no evidence that it works but I’m giving it a go anyway. I could take them off the plant and ripen them indoors. And there are tons of ways you can ripen green Tomatoes, but really why would you bother? They never taste anything like the vine-ripened ones and if you have green Tomatoes, it’s a great excuse to make Green Tomato Chutney. I think I’m going to take my chances on the vine.
How’s everyone else doing with their outdoor Tomatoes? Any tips for early ripening?
I’ve been away camping this weekend so haven’t had chance to harvest my Onions. They’ve been ready for pulling for about a week now but I haven’t been able to harvest them because it was either raining or I didn’t have time.
It’s a delicate process. The weather needs to be dry and you need enough time to lift them gently, rub off the dirt and inspect each one. If it’s damaged in any way it should go into the ‘use now’ pile. If it’s large and blemish-free then it will make a good keeper.
Either way they all need to be dried (in the sun preferably) and stored in onion baskets, nets or plaited. I usually go for the onion basket option but I might try a bit of plaiting this year. I never seem to have enough leaf to wrap around the string though!
I love the orange colours that Onions produce. It’s one of the first colours of Autumn in the garden.
I’ve been pondering why I’m so interested in gardening. Why are some people driven to grow and others not. I’m fascinated by people who don’t grow because my family were always growing something, either a greenhouse-full of Tomatoes, or a row of Potatoes, or even a hanging basket full of Busy Lizzies copied from one we saw at Disney World!
There would be lengthy discussions before we went on holiday about who would water the garden. Of course, the Tomatoes would be fine because Dad had created his own drip-irrigation system complete with temperature controlled greenhouse ventilation. Even my Grandad had a garden full of roses and a shed made from old tin cans (didn’t everyone’s Grandad?).
I became obsessed with our garden. When I was about 13 I had a very small part of it to call my own where I planted ultra small plants and pretended it was a miniature garden. My miniature garden even had a bridge (stolen from the fishtank).
I must be about 17 in the photo above - well past my ‘miniature garden’ phase but definitely entering the Henna hair dye stage! You can see the Tomatoes in the background and if you look closely probably the watering system too.
My question is simple - how did you get into growing? Who introduced you to growing and how did it happen? What age were you? What was the first thing you grew?
Well, the short answer is, ‘when it looks like this’. But, okay I’ll give you the long answer then.
I had no idea how to tell if a Peach is ripe until a few days ago when I thought - hmm that Peach looks ripe but I’m too much of a wuss to pick it and see. So I turned to the ‘all-seeing eye’ (the Internet) for some friendly advice. This is what it said.
Your Peach is ripe if…
- 1. It smells like a Peach
- 2. The side facing the sun has gone a nice dark, peach colour (as above)
- 3. The side facing away from the sun is yellow (not green).
- 4. The yellow side is firm but not hard
- 5. The Peach comes away easily with a light twist
Under no circumstances squeeze the Peach - they bruise very easily.
So there you have it. Happy Peach pickings.
ps. It tasted divine - and Dad, no you can’t have any!
We’ve had three days of solid, wall-to-wall sunshine. Which means a few things. Firstly, that my Tomatoes are ripening (more on that later) and secondly that I can start to think about lifting my Shallots and Onions. First to go are the Shallots. I planted my own saved bulbs this year and what a success they’ve been? They’re the variety Longor (which tend to be more long, missile-shaped than squat) and they’ve grown even bigger than last year!
I dug them up yesterday, making sure to tease them out gently with a fork and lightly rub most of the dirt off. Then I put them in this old sieve in the sunshine to dry. The sieve is great because it keeps them off the ground and lets the air circulate around them. Once they’re nice and papery, I’ll pack them in my wicker Onion basket and store them in my cool, dry outhouse.
I find that I have more use for Shallots than huge Onions. As there is only the three of us there aren’t many recipes that require a whole massive Onion. And Shallots definitely have a milder taste than Onions, which means they’re great for little fussy tastbuds!
Can anyone recommend some different varieties. I feel like growing some red Shallots (as well as white) next year!
My Gherkins are going crazy - as usual. So it’s time to get out the pickling jars. I did make Dill Pickles last year, following recipe that I found online. While they tasted great (very Dill-like and everything) they weren’t crunchy. Call me old-fashioned but I like my pickles to have a bit of crunch. That’s the whole point isn’t it.
So, I went on the hunt for a new recipe. Blimey! What a can of worms that is? There are literally thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of recipes available. And, I’m sure it’s not just me, but they all seemed to be slightly different. There doesn’t seem to be a definitive ‘right way’ to make Dill Pickles.
So, what’s a girl to do? Make one up of course! The recipe below is a half-way house between what most recipes suggest you do and what actually worked for me last year. Some recipes tell you to boil the cucumbers before bottling but some say use them raw. I’ve opted to use them raw because that seemed the most likely way to conserve the elusive crunch.
I’m using mostly Gherkins but I also threw in some of my Crystal Apple Cucumbers that are ready now (seeds courtesy of Victoriana Nursery. Thanks!)
My Dill Pickle Recipe
This roughly makes one jar. If you want to increase the amounts just remember that you need double the amount of water to vinegar.
- 1 cup of pickling vinega
- 2 cups of water
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of mustard seeds
- 1 clove of garlic
- Dill (heads will do)
- Pickling jar
- 2 tablespoons of salt dissolved in 400ml of water
Method:
Soak the Gherkins overnight in a salt-water solution. Make sure the water covers them.
Boil your jar or run through the dishwasher on sterilise.
Put in one teaspoon of mustard seeds, a peeled clove of garlic and the Dill. Pack in your Gherkins.
Put the vinegar and water in a pan and bring to the boil. Pour into the jar until the Gherkins are covered. Seal and process (boil the jar upright in water) for 30 mins.
This photo was taken last week.
And this photo was taken today! My eight peaches are busy ripening. And it hasn’t even been that sunny here. They’re still pretty hard though. Not even close to being ready, yet.
I’ve been tidying up the fan as it’s been growing - taking away any shoots that are growing inwards or outwards. But other than that I’ve just let it be. I’ll do some formative pruning once the leaves have dropped and I can see what I’m doing in there.
Anyone else growing Peaches in the UK (or elsewhere unlikely)?
