A Bit Of An Update

I thought I'd give you an update on a few things, some which are doing very well and others which aren't doing quite so well.

First off then, my plum tree. This is growing on dwarf rootstock in a container so is never going to produce a huge harvest but I'm very pleased with the fruit it's given me this year. The variety is Czar, a culinary plum, but it can be used as an eating plum if the fruit is left on the tree to fully mature as the flesh becomes much sweeter.

These are a few of the plums I've harvested from it, they're very sweet and juicy. They look like shiny, polished jewels once they've been washed.

Most of the potato haulms are dying back now.

I harvested the above container which had been planted up with four tubers of Anya, a second early. This is my very favourite variety of potato, but I've found it doesn't produce the weight of other varieties. I don't know if other people find this too or if I've just been unlucky with them, but I don't mind as the quality more than makes up for the weight I'm harvesting. Actually, this tub contained a decent haul, 1320 grams.

The courgettes are still producing much quicker than we can eat them. Unfortunately, my mum and dad don't eat them so we have to find other people to take some off our hands. Our next door neighbours have been given a bag full and Mick's been taking lots to work, people there seem to be very pleased to take a few home with them.

I've been wondering whether to plant my apple trees in the ground rather than growing them in containers. They're growing on dwarf rootstock so they're only small, I think they'd be fine grown against the fence so I've decided that I'll definitely go ahead with this idea. One of the reasons is that my Golden Delicious tree hasn't done very well at all. This photo doesn't show it very well, but the fruit is very small and lots of it is misshapen and deformed. The leaves too are curly and don't look very healthy at all. I shall have to read up and see what could be the cause.

My Gloster tree is another matter, this seems to be doing quite well and is bearing a number of rosy red apples, I can't wait to try them. The fruit seemed very small for quite some time but has grown a fair bit just recently.

My little peach tree is still hanging on to its fruit, but the peaches don't seem to be growing at all, they're very small. Perhaps I was a bit premature in thinking I'd have my own peaches to eat this year, time will tell. Surely they should be nearly ripe by now though.

I'm harvesting plenty of cherry type tomatoes, they've been ripening ever since we returned home from holiday, but I've only harvested one salad type so far and the beef tomatoes are nowhere near ripening yet. There's a few more salad types on the turn though now.

Most of them are still stubbornly green.

The blueberries have done really well this year and there's still lots to pick. As you can see by this photo, they all ripen at different times. I go over the bushes each day picking those which are ripe and by the following day, lots more have ripened again.

On the whole, most things are doing well but there's always some disappointments in gardening.