Overexcited about baby fruit & vegetables again

Posted by louisa on Friday 10 June 2011 in growing | 6 comments

Buff aside, things are going well in the garden at the moment. I had a nearly full day out there yesterday – digging, potting on, planting out, sowing more successional stuff and staring into space under the pretext of “planning”. I also spent a lot of time checking out how things are progressing…

Weeee! our first pinkening strawberry!

We’ve got quite a lot of fruit but this one is the first to go red. They’re Flamenco strawberries – starting a little late but should fruit right through until the autumn — a few at a time for a longer season will be better for us this year, although I think I might add an early crop/June-July cropping one for a jam-making glut :)

I also spotted my first set of to-be-courgettes this week – they’re only about 15mm by 5mm at the moment so we might need quite a few to make a ratatouille…!

They don’t need pollination so should just grow now – and knowing courgettes, by tomorrow they’ll be marrows ;)

In the winter squash department, I also spotted some round-bottomed female flowers on a few of the pumpkins – I think they will need pollinating when the flowers open up. There are plenty of male flowers open but I’ve not seen many bees around over the last week, so I might get in there with a little paintbrush, just to be on the safe side.

There are little tiny bumpy baby cucumbers appearing up too.

We’ve also got a few apples starting – it’s the trees’ first year here so we shouldn’t really let them grow apples (they should concentrate on growing up and out first) but we’re going to let each tree grow a couple, just to see what they’re like.

I think I’m especially excited about all these things because, aside from the courgettes, they’re all first for our garden – never grown strawberries, pumpkins or cucumbers before, and there is always the “what if they don’t grow?” worry.

How’s your fruiting going? Any suggestions for an early/summer glut strawberry type?

Growing faster, growing slower

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 24 May 2011 in growing | 3 comments

As I mentioned in my camping post earlier today, I spent the whole day before we went away playing in the garden so my plants would hopefully be ok home alone for four days and to catch up on everything I hadn’t done the previous weekend.

It was a good day – I weeded, I dug, I potted on, I planted out and even though I told myself I wouldn’t, I sowed more stuff (more salad/lettuce and some beans). I was a bit nervous about the stuff I planted out (a few courgettes, a few achocha and pumpkins – one of which is pictured above) because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them over the weekend but I desperately needed the space in the greenhouse. Everything seems to be doing ok today. I also planted out the hop seedlings Su sent me (thanks Su!) – they’re settling in well too and I’m hoping they’ll be a climbing layer for my mini-forest garden.

In the greenhouse, I also potted on a good number of tomatoes into their final pots – and realised quite how many more tomato pots I’ll need (although I do hope to plant some outside too). I think tomatoes are the only thing I’ve over sown – I’ve got too many of them really but not too-many too-many so it’s manageable, and there is really no such thing as surplus tomatoes, is there? I can almost see the tomato plants growing and they surprise me every time I see them because they look so sturdy, healthy and tall enough to block out the sun… ;)

Along with the tomatoes, some of our crops are going much better than I expected: our potatoes have shot up and I’ve had to earth them up twice already – I’m near at the top of some of the bags/pots. Our squash (summer squash – courgettes/zucchini – and winter squash, butternut and pumpkins) are looking very healthy indeed, hence planting some of them out the other day. The cucumbers (particularly the first batch) are flowering, the buds forming on our rapini/broccoli raab and the achocha (achocha! *jazz hands*) are climbing their way up everything around them (again, hence planting some of those out before they ensnared the whole greenhouse).

But other things though are taking a lot longer to do anything. I’m genuinely shocked that we haven’t had any lettuce or salad leaves from the garden yet* – at this rate we might have potatoes before a head of lettuce – and as I lamented on Jono’s blog the other day, our radishes are pathetic (this isn’t a new thing, they always seem to stagnate for some reason). Our leeks shot up but don’t seem to have done anything for the last fortnight (I know they’re slow growing but they seem like they’ve stopped growing…). Everything’s growing in decent compost and I don’t think it’s a case of overcrowding/too small growing space for any of those things but I’m going to pot on the leeks just in case and I’ve started more salad in new pots, sown incredibly thinly, just in case that is the problem.

How does your garden grow? Is your growing on track for this year?

* We did buy some growing salad trays from the supermarket a month or so ago, and have been regularly pillaging them for cut-and-come-again leaves but we’ve really just been keeping them alive rather than growing-growing them.

The last of the marrows

Posted by louisa on Monday 13 September 2010 in growing | 0 comments

On Saturday, I harvested the last of the marrows – just under 10kg in total. We’ll get some more courgettes yet – a dozen more or so at least – but they’ve slowed down their production enough that we’ll keep on top of them now so no more massive ones.

I decided to bring them in because a couple of their compadres had started going soggy (the non-soggy bits went to the chickens) and I thought it would be better to use them, not lose them.

We’ve probably had another couple went chickenward earlier in the year, and we’ve picked probably four or five marrows to use ourselves (for cakes, jams or actually as a vegetable) or give to others. It’s crazy to think we’ve possibly had 15-20kg of produce in marrows along – let alone all the courgettes we’ve had over the last few months!

My plans for these guys: chutney, chutney, jam and more chutney; and also more marrow cake to freeze – storing the marrow & summer egg glut together as one tasty cake!

Using up the glut: Marrow cake recipe

Posted by louisa on Monday 19 July 2010 in cooking, growing, recipes | 23 comments

In my previous post about saving marrow/courgette seeds, I mentioned that the marrow I had was just going from ripe to overripe. I had no particular plans to eat the marrow – we like courgettes a lot but thought, since the variety was billed as a courgette, it would be tasteless as a marrow. I was happy just using it as a seed nursery – but when I’d stripped out the seeds, it seemed a waste to throw it in the compost. If the chickens liked courgettes/marrows, I’d have given it to them but they’re strangely fussy birds so I was left with pounds and pounds of edible flesh.

I test fried a slice and judged it to be alright – not as flavourful as its younger siblings but certainly not bad. Tough skin though – edible but tough, so that had to go. I used half of it to make a cheesy-bacony comfort food bake thing (a variation on this recipe from the Indy but with mixed cheese – parmesan and jarlsberg – because that’s all we had in and also goats cheese makes me gip) – I had some on its own last night and we’ll have the rest tonight with pork chops in a tomatoey sauce. The other half, I used to make a marrow/courgette cake.

Saving seeds from courgettes/marrows

Posted by louisa on Monday 19 July 2010 in growing | 1 comment

As I mentioned in passing in my last post, we’re in the middle of a courgette-glut. Unfortunately the glut started in the second busiest week of my year (the summer showcase at drama – meaning I work about 60hrs instead of the usual 35hrs) so the courgettes didn’t get picked on time – and they stayed on the vine growing into marrows. I’d intended to let some of the fruits grow to marrow size anyway to collect seeds for next year so it wasn’t the end of the world.

I harvested one of the marrows yesterday – it weighed in at 1.8kg (just under 4lbs). I managed to slice a good number of the seeds in half while cutting it open (doh!) but still got 30 or 40 good size seeds from it. I’ve not saved the seeds from marrows before so I’m not sure whether or not it’ll be a success – the ones I’ve kept look fully formed and are the roughly the same size as the ones I bought this year (there were a lot of smaller ones which I discarded), but only time will tell if they’ll germinate.

When saving seeds, you’re supposed to leave the fruit on the plant for as long as possible to allow the seed to fully develop. Over ripe but not rotten is the usual guideline. This marrow was probably just edging toward over-ripe from ripe – still edible but the skin was tough (it’s over-ripe if you can’t push your thumbnail easily into the skin).

Anyway, I’ll see how these seeds dry and will try growing them next year – it feels like there is little to lose. I’ll let another couple of fruits stay on the plant longer to see what the difference is.

(Surprisingly/frustratingly, the chickens don’t seem to like courgette/marrow – a shame because there is a lot of it to go around!)