Category: GrowHome

The Birds think spring is on the way

Despite the cold weather (heavy frosts for the last few days) the birds seem to think that spring isn’t that far away. The days are starting to get longer and the birds are starting to look for nesting sites with the blue tits and great tits taking a look inside the nestboxes. In the last…… Continue reading The Birds think spring is on the way

Tomatoes for 2023 and other things

I’ve been sorting through my tomato seeds and trying to work out what to grow in 2023. As ever, its a balancing act, trying to select a range of cultivars that meet the conflicting needs of an amateur grower with not a lot of space. I have seeds for around 200 different cultivars and (as…… Continue reading Tomatoes for 2023 and other things

2023 Gardening Decisions

At this time of year when everything in the garden is quiet, thoughts turn to deciding what to grow next year. I’ve increased the space in the tunnel dedicated to strawberries which means there won’t be as much space for beans but it will be easier to separate them. There will still be space for…… Continue reading 2023 Gardening Decisions

Tomatoes starting to finish – 2022

Ok, so the tomatoes are still producing a reasonable quantity (2.5 kg today) but it’s obvious that it won’t be going on for much longer. Unusually it’s the beefsteak that are turning off first. Today we picked the last of the Aunt Rubies German Green and Black Krim. It’s a few weeks sooner than other…… Continue reading Tomatoes starting to finish – 2022

Apple Harvest 2022

Todays Apple HArvest Dehydrating Discovery Eater OK, I’ve complained long and hard about the squirrels and magpies eating our apples and wondering what to do about it. I’ve even tried netting the trees and just succeeded in trapping birds. Well, they’ve started cropping now and I don’t know what to do with them all. The…… Continue reading Apple Harvest 2022

Tomatoes Ripening Early (2022)

The hot spell we had a few weeks ago seems to have brought everything earlier than other years. This is possibly good or bad. We are about 6kg of tomatoes ahead of what we would have expected to pick by this time in an average year and it seems to be mainly down to the…… Continue reading Tomatoes Ripening Early (2022)

Today’s Harvest (August 2022)

The family have been here for the past week so it’s been difficult to know exactly how things are going. We had a heavy thunderstorm which broke the hot dry weather and, hopefully, will mean that some of the beans and courgettes will set and grow. It doesn’t affect the tomatoes because I have been…… Continue reading Today’s Harvest (August 2022)

First Tomato Harvest 2022

Today I decided that the tomatoes were starting to get ripe enough to warrant picking a few. As usual the cherry tomatoes are the first with Oleron Yellow, Red Berry, Garnet, Koralik Red Cherry & Indigo Cherry Drops making up the majority of fruit by number. However, the weight was mainly from standard red tomatoes…… Continue reading First Tomato Harvest 2022

Effects of Dry Weather

The weather this week has been hot, dry and windy. As a result, whilst the plants in the greenhouses are doing well and the tomatoes are starting to ripen in quantity, all the outside plants are suffering and need copious amounts of water. Even so, the runner beans have lost all their flowers and no…… Continue reading Effects of Dry Weather