crops

Tomato seedlings everywhere…

The picture immediately below shows this year’s tomato seedlings as they were on April 8th, one week ago. The picture at the bottom shows them yesterday, after I’d spent a large part of the afternoon potting on the Brandywines. All the Brandywine seeds I saved came up, and there were over forty of them. I only threw a few of them away – as there’s no way I will have the room in the garden to grow forty Brandywine tomato plants (to say nothing of the three other varieties I’ve planted), I will have to find some willing recipients among the neighbours. First in line is the guy from round the corner who gave me an envelope filled with sunflower seeds a couple of weeks back. One good turn deserves another! They’re the sort of sunflowers that grow to enormous heights, and they will cheer up the front garden no end. I have planted half a dozen of the seeds in little pots in our mini greenhouse. Not the conventional way of doing it, but I know that if I put them straight in the ground the birds will have them in no time.

The planks of wood you can see outside in the second picture are the remains of our barrel, after which this blog is named. Sadly the wood finally rotted so much that it started to crumble away, and the barrel was a bit of an eyesore. Its place may at some point be taken over by our dustbin, which is no longer needed for storing rubbish since Thanet Council so generously gave us a wheelie bin. Don’t think I’ll be changing the name of the blog though… somehow “Beans in a Dustbin” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Planted my tomato seeds today

In keeping with my resolution from last year, I held off planting any tomato seeds until today, April 1st. Hopefully I won’t thus be stuck with a load of indoor seedlings that have gone leggy due to lack of sunlight. Although we’re getting some nice sunny days, it’s still quite cool and I’ve noticed that my spring onions (planted a good couple of weeks ago) still haven’t come up, presumably due to low temperatures. Well, I hope it’s due to low temperatures and not seed failure lol.

Anyway, tomato varieties planted today were: Gardener’s Delight (of course), Mamande, Moneymaker and the Brandywine seeds that I saved last year. Fingers crossed that they come up, because I’m already salivating at the thought of Brandywine tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. Long wait for that though. I will be splashing out on some more Tumbling Tom hanging basket tomato seeds, because they were so gorgeous last time.

Haven’t done any other gardening other than a massive tidy-up a couple of weeks back (and planting of the aforementioned spring onion seeds). The next project will be to transfer the contents of the barrel in our front garden into a galvanised dustbin, which is no longer needed for its original purpose because dear old Thanet Council has given us wheelie bins. The barrel has come to the end of its life – its wooden bits are rotting and it’s no longer an attractive thing at all. Maybe I will have more success at producing a viable courgette crop using the dustbin than I did with the barrel.

It’s garlic planting time again

Planted eight normal-sized garlic cloves at the weekend – I looked up in this blog to remind myself when I planted them last year, and FWIW, I am two weeks later with them this year – Nov. 6th as opposed to October 24th. Am in two minds about whether to bother with elephant garlic again. Though the elephant garlic I planted last year tasted fab, it wasn’t, er, elephant sized like I expected. Though according to my other half, that might be because I didn’t leave the garlic in the container for long enough. Apparently according to him, the bulbs keep on growing, even when the stalks/leaves have wilted.

It’s been a tomato-tastic summer…

After a mini heatwave over the last week or so, my tomatoes are still ripening outside. The Gardener’s Delights and Gardener’s Pearl are pretty much over, although there are still some green ones left. We’re just waiting for a consignment of pickling vinegar to arrive at our local greengrocer – when it does, my other half is going to get to work on some green tomato & apple chutney! He made some last year and it was delicious.

I am still picking semi-ripe (well, quarter-ripe) Brandywine tomatoes and putting them on the windowsill – there are about half a dozen of them still left on the vine outside our front window. When the weather breaks, they’re all coming inside to take their chances – if they ripen, all well and good; if they don’t, it’s chutney time for them too.

Speaking of Brandywine tomatoes, I notice that the seed company I bought them from isn’t doing them this year, so I’ve had a go at saving the seeds. I put them in a little dish of water for a few days and when the water had gone all scummy, I washed the seeds gently in a strainer to get rid of the pulp, then placed them to dry on a coffee filter paper. That’s where they’ll stay for another week, until I put them in a ziplock bag and store them in the fridge till next April. Fingers crossed that the seeds come up, ‘cos Brandywine is a delicious beef tomato that tastes fab in sandwiches, with fry-ups and (my favourite way of eating them) chopped up with mozarella cheese, basil and olives, and sprinkled with extra virgin olive oil, freshly ground pepper and a bit of salt. Nom nom nom…

The first of the brandywine tomatoes

This is the very first of my brandywine tomatoes, picked exactly a week ago and eaten with mozzarella and fresh basil, lightly drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. It was lovely – the taste wasn’t intense (but then again you don’t expect it with tomatoes of this size/type), but it was very pleasant and the texture of the flesh was lovely and velvety. In other words, not at all like the beefsteak tomatoes you often get in the shops. As well as being an out-there shape, this specimen was an out-there size, too – about five inches across the bottom! It will be a while before any of its fellows are ripe enough to pick so int the meantime we’ll have to content ourselves with the Gardener’s Pearls and Gardener’s Delights, which are coming in a steady stream at the moment!

Basket of beans!

Most of the rest of the country seems to be experiencing a total meltdown at the moment, with rioting, looting etc. So here is something nice to look at: what I picked from the containers in our front garden this morning:

The tomatoes are the first of the Gardener’s Delights (there were a couple before these but now they’re starting for real), plus there’s a small One Ball courgette.

Things I’ve learned this year – part 1

I have learned a few things this year which I will be taking on board for next year’s gardening activities, and I thought I’d put them in this blog because that way, I’ll be able to find the list! So, here goes:

1. When it comes to planting tomato seeds indoors, don’t do it too early. Early to mid-April will be fine – it’s only people who grow their tomatoes in a greenhouse or conservatory who can get away with doing it earlier.
2. This year, I am really kicking myself for growing the Gardener’s Pearl variety of cherry tomatoes as opposed to Tumbling Tom, as I did last year. Although the Tumbling Tom seeds were humungously expensive, the fruit were DELICIOUS. The Gardener’s Pearls are OK, but bland – better for cooking than eating.
3. Use big containers for courgettes – buckets with a 14 or 15 inch diameter, at least.
4. Two varieties of courgette which seem to be happy with container living and give nice yields are One Ball and Golden Zucchini. I don’t know if the fact that they are both yellow has anything to do with it. Just mulch ’em regularly with home-made compost and water them generously.
5. Boot fairs and charity shops are great places to buy cheap plants if you don’t want to grow everything from seed.
6. Order a bulk lot of compost early on – litre for litre, it works out half the price of the titchy little bags.
7. Planting dried peas in a container (yes, those dried peas you get in supermarkets) gives amazingly good results – a small but steady supply of pea shoots and tiny mange-tout.
8. A top tip from a man I know who lives around the corner and also grows veg: plant nasturtiums near your runner beans. Any blackfly will eat the nasturtiums and leave the beans alone. EDIT: don’t bother with this one – he reckons that the nasturtiums were what encouraged the blackfly in the first place, and has since got rid of them. Result: no more blackfly.

And finally, here is a picture of Lottie standing guard among the elephant garlic:

Gardener’s Pearls

The first of the Gardener’s Pearls are ripening, as you can see. They taste OK but nowhere near as good as last year’s Tumbling Toms, which were out of this world. Fine for cooking though. The first Brandywines are appearing, ditto the faithful Gardener’s Delights. Soon be time for home-made tomato sauce, mmmmmm.

How to grow courgettes in a container

Step 1: use a big enough container. That’s the conclusion I’m coming to anyway, ‘cos so far, we’re doing quite well on the courgette front. OK, so a few of them have succumbed to the dreaded blossom end rot, but the majority are ripening into nice, healthy looking fruit. The buckets I’m growing the Black Beauty and Golden Zucchini in are 14 inches (35 cm) in diameter. Of course, there are other things I’ve done differently this year – like buy young plants from a shop, rather than growing them from seed. So you can’t really call it a scientific study lol. As far as yield goes, the Golden Zucchini is doing much better than the Black Beauty and Golden Ball. I will definitely be doing Golden Zucchini again next year.

Double courgette

The “grow them in big pots” policy for my courgette plants seems to be enjoying a measure of success, at least it is now that the weather is getting a little warmer. The pots in question are really buckets that started life as containers for industrial/catering quantities of golden syrup. If you spend 15 minutes poking a heated metal skewer through the bottom to create drainage holes, you have a superb container for growing courgettes and runner beans (three bean plants per bucket seems to be about right). Speaking of courgettes, I’ve decided to combat the dreaded blossom end rot by removing the flowers once the courgettes have reached about three inches in length. The one on the right is quite impressive – it’s two Golden Zucchini courgettes that have fused together early on, to give this double yolked beauty! It’ll (almost) be a shame to eat it.