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
Category: Blog
First signs of Spring 2023
Although it’s been a mild winter with only a few days of frost and no snow (as yet), it’s still nice to see the first signs of spring. The evenings are light later, the birds are collecting around the feeders and the snowdrops and aconites are starting to show colour. We’ve managed to protect the…… Continue reading First signs of Spring 2023
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
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)
Tomatoes & Carrot Thinnings for Soup
I keep on going on about how to try and deal with the glut of tomatoes, mainly freezing as tomatoes or sauce but this tomato soup recipe has two advantages. Firstly it uses a good quantity of fresh tomatoes and it also uses carrot thinnings to produce an excellent lunch. Regardless of how careful I…… Continue reading Tomatoes & Carrot Thinnings for Soup
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)
Flying Ant Day 2022
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
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