We didn’t have long to spend at the plot this weekend with travelling to Scotland on Saturday but the time we spent there seemed very productive. Our first priority was a bit of damage limitation. The tumbling tomatoes we had outside were well and truly hit by blight which is a real shame as they were so heavy with fruit. We picked those that were blemish free in the hope that they may ripen at home, fingers crossed. The carrots have been in poor shape for a couple of weeks now. The leaves started to wilt and go brown and despite some extra watering and feeding they never revived. We are still not sure what caused this, but there are a number of possible suspects, including carrot fly, insufficient watering or poor soil quality. A mass cull was in order as most of those we pulled were soft and mushy, not characteristics usually associated with carrots! We did manage to salvage a handful but it is pretty disappointing and we hope to improve things next year.
On to the produce we are having success with, it was time to harvest the garlic. The stems had collapsed and yellowed which is a sign that they are ready, although it does briefly induce panic that they have all died! Neil dug the bulbs up keeping the stems attached for hanging purposes. There were a couple of tiddlers but the vast majority were healthy and plump. We laid them out in the greenhouse to thoroughly dry out for a week or two then we will store them in a dark cupboard at home ready for some yummy recipes! The greenhouse is looking lush with lots on the verge of being ready to harvest. Neil had to tie up a few of the aubergine plants because it was so heavy with fruit. A few will probably ready to pick next weekend if the weather stays warm. The peppers are really rocketing. Each plant has about ten or fifteen fruit with more flowers that will develop later. According to Grow Your Own magazine, each sweet pepper plant should produce between three and eight peppers so we are doing pretty well by their account. We picked a few of the bigger ones as they looked ready to eat and we didn’t want the smaller peppers to be deprived of nutrients.
The lettuces that we sowed a couple of weeks ago in the greenhouse were ready for potting on. The germination rate was really high so we were running out of room on the greenhouse staging. This lead to us planting some straight out with a sprinkling of slug pellets to deter any feasting. The timing couldn’t be better as we have used almost all of our first round of lettuces so hopefully it won’t be long before these are ready for cutting.
After a generous watering of all of the beds it was time to call it a day. Before we headed home I picked some of the sweet pea flowers. Some of the stems are looking a bit weak like they might be coming to the end of their flowering season and as they have provided some much needed colour to the plot for a good few weeks it seemed time to let them do the same at home.
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