Category: GrowHome

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

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

Growing at Home – Last of the Carrots

Growing carrots is something that requires the soil to be of reasonable quality. We are clay and so our carrots never really grow very well, forking and stumpy. However, when I created the raised beds, I filled them with a mixture of garden compost, bought compost and well rotted farmyard manure. The result is a…… Continue reading Growing at Home – Last of the Carrots

Chitting Potatoes

I haven’t grown potatoes since giving up the allotment. Even then, I really only grew them to fill space. However, this year I’ve decided to minimise the amount of time I spend growing vegetables but I still need to fill the various spaces. So, potatoes get a chance this year. I’ll plant a few in…… Continue reading Chitting Potatoes

2022 – Deciding what else to grow

Whilst most of what I write about is my tomatoes, there is also space for other vegetables and fruit, some of which are permanent and others which I have to decide about. I’ve already sown broadbeans which are growing well and will give us something in around May. The strawberry plants in the tunnel are…… Continue reading 2022 – Deciding what else to grow

2022 – Deciding which Tomatoes to Grow

At this time of year, I always have a problem deciding which tomato cultivars to grow. When I first started growing tomatoes and recording what I’d grown (a long time ago now it seems), I had plenty of space and an allotment so I grew lots of plants of lots of different cultivars (my record…… Continue reading 2022 – Deciding which Tomatoes to Grow

Harvest – Mid October 2021

The days are drawing in, the evenings are darker and the weather is significantly cooler. However, there are still green tomatoes, some of which seem to be ripening others of which are succumbing to blight. Since the last harvest post we’ve picked another 9kg of tomatoes, four cucumbers, 2kg of carrots, half a kilo each…… Continue reading Harvest – Mid October 2021

Harvest- End of September 2021

The season is beginning to come to an end. We’re still getting tomatoes (another 9kg since our last post) but the plants are looking decidedly sickly with botrytis/grey mould killing off the ends of the plants, the leaves and (more frequently now) the fruit. It looks like the problem has affected even the fruit that…… Continue reading Harvest- End of September 2021