It's been a long wait, but the peppers are starting to ripen. Well...one variety is, the Snackbite. We've grown this variety before and they're absolutely delicious, so very much looking forward to trying this one out in the next few days once its fully ripened. In other pepper news, the Basket of Fire are clearly... Continue Reading →
Outdoor cucumber progress
Our outdoor cucumbers are all doing well. The Marketmore are growing up their wire mesh nicely. Unlike the other plants, we are not tying these up with string, and are instead relying on the plants to climb the wire mesh and cling on using their tendrils. They seem to be getting on alright so far! Therefore, the... Continue Reading →
Progress with the container courgettes
The first sowing of container courgettes are continuing in the way they started off - the British Summertime is growing quite wildly on the left hand side (probably because it is not designed to be shoved in a container!) and the Midnight which are the three on the left are growing incredibly compactly, as you... Continue Reading →
Here come the colourful cauliflowers!
After our trial brassica update last week, we've got a further update. The Graffiti purple cauliflowers that were just starting to form have got much bigger over the past week. And yesterday we enjoyed this one in our turkey teriyaki stir fry! We find that the purple cauliflower can look a little unappealing if boiled... Continue Reading →
The brassica harvest begins…
As you may remember, we sowed some "trial" brassicas back in March to test open packets of seeds that we had left over from last season. We sowed three of a variety of seeds: cauliflowers, broccoli and romanesco cauliflowers. The first cauliflower variety is now ready to harvest. These are Barcelona. Not the best looking... Continue Reading →
A rather snappy (excuse the pun!) pea update
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 →
