I’m pretty sure I saw the first signs of my future Sprouting Broccoli harvest today. Each branch has a tiny little sprout, tinged with purple, beginning to show. This is where the small bunches of curds will form. Ooh I can hardly wait. Purple Sprouting Broccoli is one of my favourite vegetables from the garden. You can hardly buy it in the shops (maybe at a farmer’s market) but it tastes sooo much better than common Broccoli (actually Calabrese) that it’s worth waiting nearly a whole year for.
I made sure that the plants were staked firmly and even earthed them up a little to stop wind rock. It would be a disaster if one of them fell over!
Is it me, or is this Autumn really, really mild? I don’t usually have Cos Lettuce still standing in the garden at this time of year. Even my Calendula is STILL going. There has been no sign of frost whatsoever and the last of my Tomatoes are still ripening, albeit very slowly.
I’m a bit perturbed to be honest. Anyone else experiencing the everlasting season? What have you still got that you aught not to have?
A couple of weeks ago my Ghost Rider Pumpkin looked like this. It was fully green and unripe.
Now it’s ripening well. However, the frosts are just around the corner and I’m worried it won’t fully ripen in time for Halloween (there’s still a patch of green on one side). The plant itself is dying off which means that its ripen power is waning. If a frost comes it will knock the plant back even further.
My Pumpkin is in the sunny part of the garden that still gets a lot of Autumn sun. But I’ve also tactfully removed some of the leaves that were shading the it. And rotated it so that the greenest part is facing the sun. Bottom line, I’ve done everything I can do to get it to perfection for the 31st. And I’m sure it will get there.
But… if yours is still green - you can’t eat unripe Pumpkins but you can carve them. Who can tell if the Pumpkin is green or orange when it’s dark?
Call me old-fashioned but I do like a nice Tricolore. Especially, when the Tomatoes ‘and’ the Basil come straight from the garden. There’s nothing like a nice slice of Mozzarella coupled with Tomatoes and Basil and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Très healthy too.
I also like Black Forest Gateaux and Arctic Roll!
So I have to admit our neighbours were fantastic at freezing our Raspberries for us while we were away. Full marks for that. They weren’t, however, quite so good at watering plants - infact I’m forced to give a ‘nil point’ Eurovision style, since one of my plants actually died from lack of water. Which one? Only my beloved Turk’s Turban Pumpkin!
Okay, okay so it only actually had one Pumpkin growing on it. And admittedly that one was very small. But still, the Pumpkin! When I saw its withered frame and tiny, vulnerable, perfectly formed Pumpkin, cruelly stopped in its tracked… well, I was sad. Especially, since last year’s were so massive.
Someone, however, was over the moon when he saw it. A mini Pumpkin, just for me? You really shouldn’t have. What a perfect size for little fingers. Clearly, it’s mine and will forever be so.
What’s a mum to do? I guess I’ll just wait until he’s gone to bed and then hide it away for my Autumn table display. Shuush… he’ll never know.
I’m back! And look what was waiting for me in the garden. Heaven! We had a long drive home and I stopped off at M & S (as you do) to get some essentials since we had no food at home. I nearly bought some Lettuce (and some Tomatoes - I’ve no faith) but I didn’t, I held out. I’m soooo glad I did. We came home to a bumper crop, including tons of Tomatoes, Lettuce, Cucumber, Apples, Grapes!, Blueberries and Raspberries. Even Marks and Spencer can’t top that.
I have to say (and this is a bit embarrassing given my paranoia) our neighbours were really sweet. They picked my Raspberries and put them in a box in my freezer! They are my new best friends.
Well, I’m glad to be back (with some new interesting, foreign seeds in my seed basket) and I will be going through the comments you’ve all made today. Happy Gardening everyone - onwards and upwards!
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.
