The sugar snap peas are moving rapidly at the moment. In the space of a week, they went from their first flowers forming to lots and lots of pods! We even managed to have a few in a stir fry over the weekend. I think we harvested them slightly prematurely, but they still tasted delicious,... Continue Reading →
Harvesting the elephant garlic
We won a few elephant garlic cloves in one of our National Vegetable Society Essex District Association raffles at the beginning of 2020. We tried to grow garlic last year with little success, but we were up for giving it another go this year! We grew the garlic in multipurpose compost last year, but we... Continue Reading →
Peppers: indoor vs outdoor growing
So it turns out peppers prefer to be grown indoors, or at least it gives them a head start over their outdoor counterparts. Although the ones that are growing outdoors are starting to set some fruits, there are definitely lots more on the plants in the greenhouse, and the peppers are generally larger. This is... Continue Reading →
A rainbow (well green and yellow!) of container courgettes
The Sunstripe courgette has got its first courgettes forming - very exciting! And as advertised, it is virtually spineless which is great news, as the spines can be very prickly at times, and for some reason seem to react with my skin to give me a rash! The Midnight are further ahead. We've already had... Continue Reading →
Giving the peas some TLC
Since we planted them out, we haven't needed to give the sugar snap peas too much TLC at all. We've watered them a couple of times as it has been so dry here, but other than that we've been able to just sit back and watch them grow. We noticed this week that they were... Continue Reading →
The strawberries haven’t turned out too badly
After an initial panic that our strawberry plants weren't growing as rapidly as we'd hoped, it turns out that even smallish plants can grow a fair crop of strawberries. This is the latest harvest! What this has got me wondering now is - how many strawberries could we have got if we'd started tending to... Continue Reading →
The outdoor cucumbers are really going for it!
If you remember, we have a few varieties of cucumbers that we are trying outside. Marketmore, Diva, and Tasty King. The Marketmore are the most advanced, and have now reached the top of their canes and are starting to make their own way up the wire netting. As we said before, we usually take the... Continue Reading →
Thinning out the turnips
As we mentioned in our article the other week, the turnips are growing really well in their container so far. And are starting to produce tiny turnips! Unfortunately, there's not enough space in the container to fit them all in to maturity though. Therefore, we thinned them out at the weekend. This is the end... Continue Reading →
Supporting our peppers
Now our peppers are in their final pots, they need supporting to prevent them being blown over by the wind, and also to support the plant once laden with peppers - as they can get quite heavy! We put a cane in a couple of inches away from the base of each plant, and pushed... Continue Reading →
The herb garden is coming along nicely
After planting out the herbs a month or so back, and trimming the perennial herbs like sage, the herb garden is a sea of green now. The italian parsley is growing fast now, and if we don't eat more of it quickly, I will strip back some of the older leaves and compost those. This... Continue Reading →
