Pretty and Productive 2 - Productive

So here is the "productive" side of my garden at present. In July the garden is full of good things to eat...

The apples (what few of them there are) are turning colour now, with the plain green being replaced with streaks of russety bronze. I'm keeping to my pledge of providing lots of water, so the tree is responding as well as it can. I don't think it is ever going to be a big cropper, but even a few fruits will be welcome. I think they will be ready for picking in late August or early September.

Apples "Scrumptious" - swelling and colouring-up

Now this is exciting (for me, at least)... the Aubergine flowers are wilting, revealing tiny embryonic fruits.

Aubergine "Pintung Long" - flower petals shrivelling

Aubergine "Pintung Long" - tiny fruit forming

The Coriander has formed a fair few seeds already. They are still green, so they won't be harvested for a few weeks yet.

Coriander - seeds now setting

This week I noticed the first ripening fruits on the Raspberry canes. Mine are a late-fruiting primocane variety called "Autumn Bliss", which normally produce fruit from July to November, with the heaviest yield in September. This year they are a couple of weeks behind the normal schedule, no doubt because of the lack of sunshine, but by way of compensation their foliage is more luxuriant, due to the additional rainfall.

The first fruits of Raspberry "Autumn Bliss"

The Blight vs Ripening race is still in progress in the Tomato Department. I keep picking off the worst-affected leaves (and now fruits), to keep the disease at bay, and we have actually eaten a few ripe fruits. I think that maybe the really hot weather has actually retarded the spread of the disease. If it had been damp and humid weather I think the disease would have spread much more rapidly.

Not a pretty sight!



Cherry Tomato "Losetto"


We ate the first couple of fruits from "Sungold" this week. They were super-tasty!

Tomato "Sungold" - sweetest of all

My next photo is of one of the two "Orkado" tomato plants. This is from a trial pack that was priced at only 99p. The variety is similar in many respects to the well-established "Ferline", and is bred for improved blight-resistance (hence very attractive to me!). It is a very strong type, and evidently a prolific fuiter. This plant has set seven trusses already, and it is only a touch over six feet tall. Meanwhile Ferline has only set three trusses and has produced a huge amount more foliage. There is very little blight damage on Orkado so far. Long may it stay that way.

Tomato "Orkado" - a new variety, but evidently a heavy bearer

The lettuces I planted in that plastic storage-box are doing very well. I think they are just about ready for harvesting. The trouble is, I now have loads of lettuce available and you can't really eat salad three times a day!

Lettuces in a plastic container