I appreciate I'm not that tall, but before we starting growing courgettes up stakes, I never thought a courgette could grow taller than me. But they proved me wrong! This photo is of the British Summertime that we planted out in a container in the spring. And it's still going! In fact, it's got to... Continue Reading →
Colourful capsicums
Since the last update, the peppers have just kept coming. It's helped by the warm sunny weather, meaning the peppers are ripening fast. Within a week, the D'Asti Giallo pepper has completely ripened. I'm extremely proud of my first ever homegrown bell pepper! In connected news, the next one is ripening. So fingers crossed this... 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 →
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 →
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 →
Radishes galore!
We said radishes were fast growing, and we weren't lying! We had our first harvest of these less than 6 weeks from sowing. Our beetroot are nearly there too now and we could probably start eating these any day now. We just need to wait until the weather improves a bit so we fancy salad!... Continue Reading →
A look back at 2019
This time last year, we made a plan for the growing season ahead. So we thought it would be a good time to look back at that plan and see how we got on! Potatoes We'd set ourselves the goal of three sowings of potatoes for 2019, to harvest in May, July and December. Well... Continue Reading →
We tried our hand at a bit of exhibiting…
The Essex District Association of the National Vegetable Society hosts a Mini Show each year in early July. This year, our sights were set on the collection of four kinds of vegetable, one of each kind. We had the following: cherry tomato, kohl rabi, courgette and potato. And this is our final exhibit! We were... Continue Reading →
End of July update
There are a few things that you haven't heard about for a while, so we thought we'd give you an update on these. Sweetcorn After a number of weeks where the plants didn't seem to make much progress at all, they seem to have got established now and have shot up all of a sudden.... Continue Reading →
You win some you lose some. Update on the psychedelic vegetable kit!
The kit has been growing with varying amounts of success across the different crops...! Spring onions Only two germinated, and then one of those didn't make it to this stage. The remaining one is still growing away in the pot (a pot big enough to fit 50 in!) but never mind, we'll see how it... Continue Reading →
