Too Chilly For The Chilies

I think it's only a matter of time now till we get a frost so I have taken all the chilies off the plant. As you can see, they're in different stages of ripeness but they can still be used green. These are Serrano chilies and my daughter bought me the seeds for Christmas last year so I felt compelled to grow them even though we don't eat chilies. These will be given away to someone who can make use of them. I only grew one plant which I think has done very well.

I only realised last weekend that there are still some potatoes in the ground at the allotment, I had forgotten all about them. I will make sure that they get dug up this weekend. The potatoes I am growing in containers in the hope of new potatoes at Christmas are doing really well. They've now been earthed up to the top of the container and they're residing in the greenhouse. I will make sure that they also get a covering of fleece before we get a frost just to give them a little extra protection.

As well as digging up the remaining potatoes, I'm hoping to get some more clearing and digging done at the allotment this weekend. It's certainly worth digging the allotment over in autumn if at all possible as the frosts break down the clods of earth and it really is much easier to work the following year. So fingers crossed for some fine weather this weekend.

Neighbours...Everybody Needs Good Neighbours

Our next door neighbour has quite a few apple trees in her garden and yesterday she gave us a dozen baking apples. I don't know what kind they are. My daughter made a delicious apple pie with some of them and I ate more than my fair share of it. I'm going to make some more pies to pop in the freezer.

Hubby gave the greenhouse it's final tidy out over the weekend. The remaining tomatoes have all been brought inside to finish ripening on a windowsill and the plants have been disposed of. I never add tomato plants to the compost just in case there's any blight around, perhaps I'm just being over cautious. The potatoes which have been planted up in containers for Christmas have now been moved in to the greenhouse to protect them from any frost we might get, though we haven't had any yet.

I had a trip to the allotment yesterday and harvested yet more French beans. I was still picking them late last year too. Even the courgettes are still producing, I brought four home with me and there's more growing and yet more flowers still to open. I don't think it will be long before we get a frost though and that will finish them off. I cleared the flower bed, bringing home the sunflower heads to dry in the greenhouse. They will then be put out for the birds.

Still More To Come

I've just picked another few tomatoes from my plants, but there's still more to come if I can get them to ripen. My greenhouse is only four foot by six foot, not big by any stretch of the imagination, but it holds enough tomato plants to keep me supplied throughout summer. I'm reluctant to plant tomatoes at the allotment because of the risk of blight, I hear so many stories of people losing their whole crop to blight that it's much safer to keep tomatoes to the greenhouse. On the whole, I've been very pleased with my tomatoes this year, and will definitely be growing some of the same varieties again next year. In the past, I've always tried some new varieties each year, but I've been so happy with the varieties I've grown this year that I don't know if I'll bother next year.

Earlier on in the year, my daughter won a competition run by Wyevales and one of her prizes was a grafted pepper plant. Grafted plants are supposed to be less prone to disease and more likely to produce a good crop which will ripen outdoors. I had high hopes of harvesting lots of peppers, but the plant has only produced six, three earlier on in the year and three which are still ripening on the plant. I think I'll stick with growing from seed, though I think I'll grow more plants next year as I've become quite partial to peppers this year. I'd be interested to hear which varieties have grown well for you, and if you've grown them in a greenhouse or outdoors.

I didn't manage to get to the allotment this weekend, though we had a gorgeous day here on Sunday. Instead we took a walk at Newmillerdam Country Park, you can read about it on my other blog, Through The Keyhole.

Decisions, Decisions

It's that time of year again when the seed catalogues are dropping through the letterbox, and we're deciding what we want to grow next year. I've also had a trip to Wyevale Garden Centre at York, where they were selling off packets of seeds for 50p, so I couldn't come away empty handed. I always tend to buy a packet of cucumber seeds when the sale's on as they're always so expensive to buy otherwise. This time I've gone for Prima Top which is a F1 all female, mini fruited greenhouse type. These should have been £3.99 for the packet which only contains five seeds, so I consider 50p to be a bargain.

I bought a packet of marrow seeds in the Wyevale sale too. I've never grown marrow before, but this year, I used some of my overgrown courgettes as marrows and stuffed them with minced beef, tomatoes and feta cheese and they were delicious, so I decided I would grow the real thing next year.

It's very damp and misty here today but there's a couple of sunny days predicted for Sunday and Monday. I'm hoping the forcast is right as I need to put in some serious work on the plot, I'm so behind with everything.

Saving Seeds

This is my first attempt at saving seeds, and I'm doing it out of necessity. This year I have grown a variety of tomato called Tangella. It's a medium sized orange tomato and I'm so pleased with it's taste that I want to grow it again next year. The seeds were kindly given to me and until a couple of days ago, I couldn't find anywhere which sold the seed so I decided to save some myself. I followed the instructions from Matron's 17th September post on her Down On The Allotment blog, and at the moment the seeds are drying out on a saucer. I had mentioned on UK Veg Gardeners that I couldn't find anywhere which sold this seed and I was supplied with the web address for a site called Tomatopedia. It's well worth a look as it sells so many different types of tomato, including Tangella.

Last Christmas, I was bought The Allotment Gardener's Cookbook. I've used it this year and found it really useful. The recipes are divided in to chapters according to which veg is used, but I would now like a cookbook where the recipes are divided in to monthly chapters according to what's in season. I'd be really pleased if anyone could give me any recommendations.

It's a beautiful day today, so different from the weather we had yesterday, I'm sure my allotment must be under a foot of water now after all the rain we had. I had hoped to get to the allotment to pick some more beans, they're still producing really well, but I'll have to go today instead.

Starting To Ripen

I have one chili pepper plant which has produced lots of chilies, but until now they have refused to ripen. Now, one by one, they are turning from green to red. I don't usually cook with chilies so wouldn't have grown the plant had it not been for my daughter buying me a matchbook of seeds for Christmas. This is a variety called Serrano, and the one plant has produced many chilies. Whether we will eat them or give them away remains to be seen.

I thought I would give you an update on the blue potatoes which I grew this year, Blue Danube. I wouldn't have ordered this particular potato had it not been for the fact that I qualified for an offer and bought the potatoes for 99p. The plants produced a good crop and there was little slug damage, however, when it came to boiling they just turned to mush. I tried baking some but their skins turned rock hard, no good for someone like me who thinks the skins are the nicest part of a baked potato. So on the whole, I was rather disappointed with this potato and won't be growing them again.

The garden got a good tidy up at the weekend. The rabbit hutches were brought down from the grass on to the patio for the winter where it's much easier to clean them out and tend to the rabbits' needs. They still get a good run around when the weather permits though. Lots of pots containing summer bedding have now been emptied out in to the compost and put away ready for next year. The garden is definitely winding down ready for winter.

Potatoes For Christmas

After the success of my potatoes for Christmas experiment last year, I decided to grow more again for this Christmas. Last year, I just saved some of the seed potatoes which I bought for planting earlier in the year, but this year I decided to order seed potatoes which were delivered later in the year specifically for planting for Christmas. The varieties advertised were Orla, which is a first early, and Vivaldi, Carlingford and Maris Peer which are all second earlies. When they were delivered the Orlas had been substituted for Bambino. They've all been planted in containers and are growing well. At the moment they're outside but I'll make sure that they're moved in to the greenhouse before we get a frost. I don't heat my greenhouse so they'll be covered with fleece for extra protection. It was lovely last year to have newly harvested potatoes on our Christmas dinner plate.

The weather has picked up again over the last couple of days. Last week was so cold that I turned on the central heating to heat the house through before we got out of bed, but that's been turned off again as the weather has improved. I'm hoping that it stays dry as I want to get plenty of digging done before winter sets in.

My tomatoes are still ripening in the greenhouse. I've noticed lots of people starting to take off their green tomatoes and ripen them on the windowsill but I haven't had to resort to this yet. There's a couple of varieties which I've grown for the first time this year which I will definitely grow again next year. The first is San Marzano, a plum tomato which is ideal for cooking or making sauces with, and it has a lovely flavour when cooked. The second is a heirloom variety, Tangella, which has medium sized orange fruit. I was very kindly given some Tangella seeds to try, and so far I haven't been able to find anywhere which sells them, so I'm making sure that I save some seed. I just hope that I manage to grow them again next year as they're delicious.

Lucky Lucky Me

Many thanks to Damo from Two Chances Veg Plot Blog who hosted a giveaway. I was one of the lucky winners and yesterday I received my prize of a £25 Lands' End voucher and three packets of Nasturtium seeds. I had hoped that I might get to spend the voucher on myself but I made the mistake of showing my twelve year old daughter the website and now she has other ideas. Actually there are some fab clothes on there for girls, I could spend the voucher over and over again on things for her. Thanks again, Damo, you can see that we'll have no trouble spending it.

It's that time of year again when the garden is in desperate need of tidying up. Many plants have finished flowering and stems are wilting and turning brown. I don't tidy the garden like I used to though. I now know how important it is to leave some of those stems and fallen leaves, no matter how unsightly they look, so that the beneficial insects have somewhere to overwinter. I keep meaning to make a bug hotel but another year has nearly passed and I still haven't done it. If I manage to keep the beneficial insects in the garden over winter, then they will hopefully stay and give me their help again next year.

I'm having another great year for beans. I'm still getting huge amounts of French and runner beans from my plants so I intend to freeze some for the winter months. How nice it is to have the taste of summer during those cold months.

Caught In The Act

It's four weeks today since Archie arrived in our household and ever since he's been a little rascal. This is him, caught in the act of eating leaves off my alpine strawberry plant, which to be honest has seen better days. He can't pass this plant without having a nibble. The other day he was running around with a worm dangling from his mouth, but he does help with the garden pests too. The other night when it was quite dark my daughter thought he had picked up a twig so promptly stuck her fingers in his mouth and pulled it out, it turned out that it wasn't a twig at all but a big juicy slug, urgh. Last night he came running in to his bed with a huge snail which I had to retrieve and dispose of. I can see that we've got our hands full with him.

Last year when I installed my small wildlife pond I had high hopes that there would be some frog spawn in there this year. Unfortunately this didn't happen but I'm now keeping my fingers crossed for next year. There have been three resident frogs in there all summer so I'm hoping that they'll stay and raise some young.

I have dug up some more of my maincrop potatoes, Lady Balfour. They're a really nice potato, delicious baked, but sadly quite a few have slug damage. None of my first or second early potatoes had any damage, even though they were left in the ground quite a long time, I've only just finished digging up the International Kidney, and I know that other people have had less damage this year due to it being a dry summer, so that's disappointing. I've decided that next year I will grow my first and second earlies only in containers and that will free up more space at the allotment for maincrop potatoes so that I have plenty to store over winter. I was very happy with my first earlies, Sharpes Express, so I will grow these again next year, but I wasn't keen on International Kidney and I'm not happy with the slug damage in the Lady Balfour so I'm on the lookout for a second early and a maincrop to try next year.

Harvest Time

I had a good haul from the allotment today. I'm still digging up my second early potatoes, International Kidney, but I'm not keen on their flavour or the way they break up on cooking so I won't be growing them again. I've started digging up my maincrop potatoes, Lady Balfour and Blue Danube, a blue variety, but haven't eaten either yet so can't give a verdict on taste. I've also harvested runner beans, three varieties of French beans plus the last three Sonesta which are the yellow beans, chard, curly kale, cavolo de nero, courgettes, tomatoes and a swede.

I've started thinking about crops for the winter. I've already got some curly kale, cavolo de nero, chard and purple sprouting brocolli in the allotment. I have lots of leeks at home which are still waiting to go in, and at the weekend I bought some plug plants from a local market. I got some spring greens and also some savoy cabbage. They were only £1 for each tray and look like strong healthy seedlings.

I don't think I've given the allotment the attention I should have done this year for one reason or another. Even so, I think it's been well worth the £20 per year rent. I've definitely had more than £20 in produce from it, strawberries alone would have probably cost me more than this in a supermarket. Next year I want to give the allotment more of my attention, so I intend to get as much of it dug over before winter comes so that the frosts can help break up the soil. This was my intention last year but somehow it didn't happen and this year it seemed like a mammoth task to get it all done. Let's hope that the weather holds up now so that I manage it this year.

Tomato Varieties

Every year I try some different tomato varieties along with my old favourites such as Tigerella and Gardener's Delight. The new ones I tried this year were Harbinger, Tangella and San Marzano. Harbinger is the one on the left in the photo and Tangella is the light coloured one. The San Marzano were started off quite a while after the others and is only just starting to ripen now so I can't give you my verdict yet, but I'm quite impressed with the others I have grown this year. I think next year I will simplify things a little and grow one salad variety and one cherry variety.

As the season is coming to an end it's time to start thinking of next year. A job for this weekend is to go through my seeds and see what I've got and what I need to buy. I usually go to the Wyevale sale which starts sometime in September where the seeds are on sale for 50p per packet. Some great bargains can be had. In the past I've had a sweet pea collection, five varieties in one packet which should have been over £4, a herb collection, again with five varieties in one packet and again it should have been over £4, and last year I got my cucumber seeds, Bella, which should have been £4.45.

I've really enjoyed writing this blog for the last seventeen months but would also like to include other things about my family life. I toyed with the idea of widening the subject matter of this blog but I would really like to keep this to gardening, so I have started another blog. Keeping with the theme of television programmes my new blog is called Through The Keyhole and will hopefully give you a glance through the keyhole of my front door in to my family life. I hope I will see you there.

It Was Worth It

It was very late to be planting my onion and shallot sets in May, and although I haven't got a huge crop, and they haven't grown quite as well as they would have done if they were planted earlier, it was worth getting them out. Admittedly, the onions are very small but still useable, but the shallots divided nicely and I have quite a few to be going on with. Next year I will make sure that I plant them out much earlier, but this just goes to show that you will still be rewarded with late crops.

I'm extremely pleased with my potato harvest so far this year. I planted some of my first early potatoes, Sharpes Express, and my second early potatoes, International Kidney, in containers and also some in the allotment. I had great yields from the containers and have only just finished the first earlies which were planted in the allotment. The varieties I chose last year suffered a lot of slug damage in the allotment, but the Sharpes Express suffered none. This may be due to the fact that we've had a dry season this year, or it may be down to the variety. I will grow Sharpes Express again next year. I had never heard of the variety before I chose them this year, but they have been around for about a hundred years, and I've had a great harvest from them. The container grown ones produced a good harvest and the ones at the allotment came out without any damage. The International Kidneys were quite disappointing. They produced a good amount both in containers and in the ground, but they broke up on cooking and the flavour was rather bland. I won't bother growing these again. My maincrop potatoes were just planted at the allotment and haven't yet been dug, but there are two varieties so I will let you know how I've done with those at a later date.

I didn't have much luck with my brassicas last year. This year I've just bunged stuff in and hoped for the best, really leaving things to get on with it. I'm enjoying lots of kale and cavolo de nero at the moment, and there's kohl rabi and swede waiting to be pulled. I think we can overthink things or pander to things too much sometimes.

A New Garden Pest

After years of listening to my daughter's nagging I have finally given in and allowed a little bundle of fluff to enter our lives. This is Archie. He's a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and he is fourteen weeks old today. We got him last Thursday and he's settled in really quickly. What a pest he is in the garden though, pulling the heads off my flowers and picking up stones and eating them, as well as chasing the rabbits when they're out in their runs. I'm intending to show him the virtues of having a nice garden rather than a garden full of headless plants, and I'm looking forward to having him down at the allotment with me. I think he's going to need a lot of training before he's at that stage though.

We're picking more and more beans now. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm really impressed with the Sonesta dwarf French beans. They're a waxy yellow bean and are full of flavour, as well as being a heavy cropper. I will definitely grow these again next year. I'm enjoying seeing the splash of yellow on my plate.

I harvested the first of my cavolo de nero this week. I've never grown this vegetable before but this is another that will be a regular on my allotment from now on. I really enjoy green leafy vegetables and this one has a delicious flavour. It's actually a winter vegetable so I'm hoping that I'll get many more pickings over the coming months.

A New Site For Gardeners

A new site for UK gardeners has been launched this week by Gillian Carson of My Tiny Plot. UK Veg Gardeners is a community site and basically does what it says on the tin, it's a site for veg gardeners here in the UK. There's a forum, links to news items, photos of people's veg and groups among other things. Although there are other gardening sites, these tend to be huge covering the whole world, or not specialised enough covering a huge spectrum. Gillian wanted to create a smaller, more intimate site for veg gardeners in the UK. The site has only been launched this week but already is proving to be very popular with many people signing up to become members and lots of content being added. I wish Gillian every success with it, I'm sure that it's popularity will continue to grow. Why not pop over and check it out?

I was thrilled to bits at the back end of last week to receive an email letting me know that I am Dobbies blog of the week. They've given my blog a lovely write-up too. It means a lot to me to know that people find my blog interesting and that they enjoy reading it. I'm so grateful for all the lovely comments my readers leave too, they make my day, so thank you all.

Turn Your Back For Five Minutes...

...well, a fortnight actually, and this is what happens, overgrown courgettes which have turned in to marrows. We returned from our holiday to find that everything is doing well. As I suspected before I left, the tomatoes have started to ripen, as have the peppers which are also turning red.

We had a lovely holiday. It only drizzled one morning and one afternoon out of the whole fortnight so we did really well with the weather. I understand that there was a little more rain than that here in Yorkshire which is probably why everything at the allotment has grown so well, including the weeds!

My French beans are just starting to produce. I've picked the first few which have been eaten over three meals. This year I have grown Sonesta which is a yellow dwarf bean and Blauhilde which is a purple climbing bean, as well as Safari, a dwarf bean and Blue Lake, a climbing bean which I have grown before. I'm very impressed with Sonesta which have produced a good crop from the few plants I have and taste delicious. They also stay yellow when cooked which adds a little colour to the plate. My runner beans have romped up their wigwam whilst I've been away and are now covered in red flowers, so it won't be long before I'm harvesting those too.

Holidays over, it's now time that I tackled those weeds. They're so bad that once I stride in to the thick of them you may never see me again. Wish me luck.