This year has been a bad year for blackfly, made worse (in our garden at least) by the fact that they are moved around from one plant to another by ants. They started on the broad beans which they forced me to harvest earlier than usual so they were smaller and migrated to the dwarf…… Continue reading Flying Ant Day 2022
Month: July 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
Box Tree Moth – a relative newcomer
With the recent hot weather our windows and doors have been open in the evening and so more insects than usual have appeared. I’m not one who can identify insects (my grandfather was the entomologist) but this one looked pretty and I thought I would be able to identify it. Out came the Butterfly and…… Continue reading Box Tree Moth – a relative newcomer
Cucumbers – plenty & pickling
This year I’ve grown a different variety of cucumber. Normally I grow ”Burpless Tasty Green” which are an outdoor variety and are usually quite successful in the greenhouse and outdoors. This year, however, I had run out of seed (I know, I should have checked). Anyway, I had to go to the local garden centre…… Continue reading Cucumbers – plenty & pickling
Growing Vegetables at Home – Growing for Value
With the increasing cost of food, many people are writing about “growing your own food”. In some instances, they describe situations which aren’t representative of the average family with an average garden. Two Acre walled Gardens, the ability to keep livestock (usually chickens), etc. or they are growing things that aren’t practical or useful (Asparagus,…… Continue reading Growing Vegetables at Home – Growing for Value
Elephant Hawkmoth
Whilst described by my Field Guide as ” one of the more common European hawkmoths”, I don’t remember ever seeing one before. This dead specimen was on the floor of one of our greenhouses. I’ll have to keep a watch out for the caterpillars because they can be voracious eaters of both the plants and…… Continue reading Elephant Hawkmoth
Tomatoes – How many Trusses is the right number for Indeterminate Plants?
A truss of tomatoes is the bunch of fruit growing off the stem. Different cultivars have different sorts of trusses, some are long with up to 40 tomatoes on a truss, others are much shorter with only a few (sometimes as few as five or six) tomatoes. We grow tomatoes to get as many ripe…… Continue reading Tomatoes – How many Trusses is the right number for Indeterminate Plants?