I know this is weird but I have a Raspberry glut. My Autumn Raspberries are producing at such a rate that the three of us can’t keep up with them. Infact, we’re a little bit sick of eating Raspberries (when I say we, I don’t mean a certain 2-year-old who is happy to eat them for breakfast, dinner and tea!).

So, I decided to make some Raspberry milk with the surplus. Just a cup full of milk in the blender with a handful of Raspberries. That’s all. No sugar needed.

Then serve to your waiting customers.

Our local village is celebrating the centenary of its annual flower show - and I’m planning to enter. I’m not sure what I’ll enter yet, it could be a vegetable or possibly some fruit, or even ‘a Floral Arrangement in a Wine Glass’, or I may convince Jackson to do an ‘Animal Using Veg, Fruit and Flowers (cocktail sticks may be used)’. Who knows?

But this whole thing got me thinking; we should have a mini Flower Show of our own, right here. Where you can display the fruit and veg (and flowers too) that you’re most proud of. Of course, points will be awarded for a photo well taken, and special care should be afforded to the presentation of said fruit and veg items. The use of doilies and fancy crockery is positively encouraged. And a prize will be given to the best in show.

Categories are as follows:

• Display of home-grown vegetables (singular or assorted)
• One or a collection of home-grown fruit
• Cutting Flowers
• Display of garden-grown herbs

The prize is this cute little Garden Kit from The Balcony Gardener. The kit contains a garden notebook, wildlife spotter notebook, stickers and a garden planner for drawing, doodling and making notes. The best in show photo will also make it onto the homepage of UKVG.

All exhibits to be staged by Monday 6th September (ie. sent to me via email at gill@carsonified.com). The judge’s decision is final and all exhibits not collected after the show will be auctioned in the raffle (because there has to be a raffle, right?).

This is what Cabbage White caterpillars look like when left to their own devices. I thought I had squished all of the eggs on my young Cabbages, Broccoli and Kale plants, but no. Apparently, this little clutch of siblings had evaded my thumb. I found them munching through this leaf and promptly nipped it off.

The thing is when they get to the moving stage I just can’t kill them. They’re too, you know, alive. So I put the whole leaf, caterpillars and all, in the compost bin. I’m not sure what will happen to them in there but at least they will have something to eat, if not anywhere to fly to. Oh well.

My Pear’s are nearly ready to be picked. They should be ready in late August or early September and I know that I should really pick them when they are unripe and ripen them indoors for the best results. The trick is knowing when to harvest them, even though they are still unripe.

Here are a few tips that I’ve found useful:

• If the Pear is difficult to pull of the tree, it isn’t ready.
• Cup the Pear in your hand and give it a light squeeze, if the flesh is slightly springy then it’s ready. If it’s rock-hard then it’s not ready.
• If you see other fruits dropping from the tree it’s likely that the fruits still on the tree are ready.
• If your Pears have changed colour from green to lighter green or even yellow (depending on variety) this is another sign that they may be ready to pick.

Pick a Pear by grasping the fruit and twisting or rolling it to make the stem pull away from the branch. You want the stem still intact.

Happy harvesting!

This is what I harvested from my garden last night. A clutch of green Tomatoes. I had forgotton to stake one of my plants and the top fell over and snapped so I had to cut it off. But that’s okay because I’ve been looking for an excuse to make more Green Tomato Chutney for a while now.

The first of this season’s Peaches. Actually, I found this one on the floor so I had no choice but to eat it. It tastes lovely, slightly hard on one side, but still beautifully fragrant.

Then a small group of Raspberries. I have to get in there before my little boy does. I think this is the biggest harvest of Raspberries I’ve had to myself all summer!

And finally some Asters. A bit of an eclectic mix but sometimes that’s just what you get when you have a small plot. You gotta take what comes your way, haven’t you?

I’m very excited to finally be able to let you know about a little project I’ve been working on with some other vegetable garden bloggers here in the UK. It’s a new community site called UK Veg Gardeners.

I have been thinking for many months that while it’s great to have lots of different blogs on the subject of vegetable and fruit gardening what was missing was a central place for us all to hang out. Yes, I know that there are other community sites that do that but they either tend to be for general gardeners (I like Clematis but not ‘that’ much!), or they are so big that they cover all the veg gardeners in all the world.

What I crave for is a small community of people like me, obsessed with veg and fruit here in the UK. So I’ve limited it to UK growers only (sorry US and others - it might expand soon).

It doesn’t matter if you don’t blog, all that matters is that you are passionate about growing and want to meet others that do the same.

It’s a social site so the idea is to talk to people. You can ask questions in the forum, add photos of your best veg, add links to news items, create a group for your local area or something you are interested in (ie. Growing Chillies) and just generally socialise. You can even personalise your page to look however you want it to.

I do want to make it clear that the site is not-for-profit. I have some small costs to cover so we’ll be looking for one sponsor, but over and above that I’d like the site to be virtually owned and facilitated by everyone who uses it.

I’m hoping that the site will bring the UK gardening community together in a new way that makes us all feel like part of something special. Who knows, we might even get out from behind our computers and actually meet more!

So why not register. Everyone is welcome to join, it’s free and you might meet someone who lives just round the corner from you who is equally nuts about growing veg. You never know.

I picked a few of the first Autumn Raspberries today. They were amazing! I copied Harry Dodson’s way of harvesting them from the ‘Victorian Kitchen Garden’ DVD by picking a few leaves and putting them in a wooden box. A bit of overkill I think for the size of harvest, but still, it made it feel special.

I might have to think about culling the number of canes I have this Winter as they’re starting to take over that side of the garden. Maybe if I take out every other one I should be able to thin them out in that way.

But for now I’m enjoying Raspberries every morning from my bumper crop! I love this time of year don’t you :)

I’m attempting to grow some Potatoes for Christmas Day. I had heard that it was possible but I’ve never tried it before. I’ve done some research so I’ll tell you what I know but with the proviso that I’m not speaking from experience here, just hearsay.

Firstly, you need to buy a solid second-early variety like Maris Peer. Then you should plant them in the normal way. I planted mine a week ago and already they are growing well.

The trick with Summer-planted Potatoes is watering. They need watering during any dry periods - just until Autumn when there should be enough rain to water them naturally.

When the plants are around 25cm high, earth them up to give them a good sturdy grounding and space to grow in.

You might find that Summer-planted Potatoes are prone to Blight because they’ll be sitting through a lot of wet weather. You can decide how you will cope with that. If you’re okay using Bordeaux Mixture then you can do that, or you can try to grow them under cover (either poly tunnel or greenhouse). But either way snip off infected leaves as they occur, as you would with normal Potatoes.

But what about frost? Well, certainly in the UK the worst of the weather usually comes post-Christmas time. So you should be able to keep and eye on the weather and throw a fleece over them if there is a particularly nasty frost forecast. But, if your Potatoes make it to November and a frost hits then the leaves might die back but the Potatoes should be fine underground for a few weeks.

Just remember to dig up your Potatoes ‘before’ Christmas Day if there is frost forecast. You wouldn’t want to put in all that effort only to be foiled by a solid, unworkable soil on the big day!

It’s getting to that time of year again, when you start to think about (gulp) next year’s harvest. It’s time to plant out over-wintering Brassicas like Broccoli, Kale and Winter Cabbage. The seedlings should be pretty sturdy before planting out and they’ll need protecting against Cabbage Whites still. But come the first frosts they should be strong little plants ready to bare the brunt of the Winter. In harsher climes or on exposed plots you might need to protect them all Winter long. Here in the sunshine state of Bath, UK :) I don’t need to do that. Last year my Broccoli stood through the snows and everything. Just remember to plant them quite firmly and even stake them if your plot is particularly windy.

One lucky little boy has a new Garden House at My Tiny Plot. I was saving the space under the deck to make a fern garden or rockery one of these days. But honestly, I’m not that into non-edibles and I’ve been stalling with this project like a schoolboy avoiding homework. It seemed like a chore. Then one day I was watching Jackson playing in the garden and I noticed that he spends a disproportionate amount of time ‘messing’ under the deck. Poking things with sticks, chasing the cats, picking up dubious items and looking like he might eat them. The usual for a two-year-old.

That’s when it struck me that the space under our deck would make a perfect play house area. And… it would release me from the chore of having to make something of it. Genius!

It would have to be a bespoke house since it was to fill such an unusual shape. So, I rang a local joiner that we’ve worked with before and he came and he built Jackson a gorgeous Little Garden House complete with window boxes and everything. We even had electricity put in so he could use it more out of season if he wants to. We’re so happy with it and Jackson is, as you can imagine, over his little moon.