A bit of half-decent weather is getting me outside more. Harvesting potatoes, beans and cabbage. Trying to get what we can from the tomatoes which are not a success story this year.
Crop of Orla potatoes from 4M2 raised bed
Orla Potatoes
This haul was from just four square metres. The raised bed by the polytunnel gave us a bumper crop. Only half a dozen rejects out of the barrow load. Being a staple, we’ve still got a lot more potatoes in the ground to harvest.
The patio is just gorgeous, a riot of colour. Val looks after the flowers, my main contribution is to water when told. She feeds them weekly, deadheads whenever she’s outside and moves pots about to keep the best to the fore.
It’s a pleasant, welcoming walk to the front door watched over by our Indalo man on the wall.
Tomatoes
It’s getting quite crowded in the Vitavia greenhouse.
After allowing the Quadgrows to run dry, the tomato plants have recovered a bit but they’re not looking very healthy. Some of the smaller fruits have wrinkled skins and a lot of the leaves are browning at the end. I’ve also got some botrytis which is down to the weather.
I’ve thinned the leaves a little throughout the house. This allows more light to the fruits and improves airflow around the plants.
I’m resigned to us having a poor crop of tomatoes this year. If the weather had cooperated I dare say we’d have had a bumper crop as usual.
Sungold Tomatoes
These have been a favourite of ours for 20 years. Fast growing with masses of super-sweet fruits, they’ve been a banker. Not this year, the plants are spindly and weak with not many fruits and those tiny.
I’ve heard a few people say the variety isn’t performing as it used to and I agree with them. Nowadays we expect our seed strains to be stable but Sungold seems to have run its course. Incidentally, a lot of older growers say Gardener’s Delight isn’t a patch on what it was in the past. Seed strains will change with time unless continually rogued and carefully selected. Sometimes even then.
Broad Beans
Trug full of Karmazyn broad bean pods.
The rest of the broad beans yielded this trug full of beans. We sat outside with our grandson podding. Took a couple of hours before the trug was empty. Another couple of hours to blanch and bag around twenty good portions for the freezer.
They’re Karmazyn, a fantastic-flavoured, beautiful pink bean that freezes well.
Cabbages
Cabbages soaking in salty water to drive out the slugs & bugs. Note the worm on the cabbage top right in photo.
The last of the white cabbages came up. They should have been pulled a couple of weeks ago but better late than never.
Soaked in salty water for best part of an hour to drive out the slugs and bugs. Even that doesn’t always get them all. But, if they’re not good enough for the bugs, they’re not good enough for us
I read the posting which John put about his tomatoes in his greenhouse and how they have performed, or rather, not performed for him this year. ours seem to be as good as ever, we grow them until they are about a foot or so tall or a little more, when we water frequently and then make them continue without any more water, they must put their roots down really deep into the ground but they produce lots of fruits and continue to grow tall and give even more tomatoes. I do not stop them at the top of the roof but let them continue with some support and they normally give us fresh tomatoes well into November.
Yes but John and I grow in a quadgrow which you have to check the water level weekly. I missed watering one week and when I checked like John’s they had run dry but mine only just, they were still damp I had caught them in time. I grow this way as my greenhouse is in my yard on concrete. Quadgrow are the best thing ever for growing tomatoes and cucumbers as you don’t get blossom end rot through erratic watering. They have cropped and grown well in the greenhouse but for some reason not so well in the hanging baskets that I grow tumbling tom in, for some reason the flowers haven’t pollinated as they usually do, leaving a patchy crop.