Saturday 8 September 2018

Late Summer bounty

I've recently written a lot about harvests from my Courtmoor Avenue plot, but my main focus is always on my own home garden. Since it is literally on my doorstep I am able to tend to it - and enjoy it - much more easily, and much more often. If you're in a hurry, you can sometimes miss things like this, a tiny Cyclamen:


This little chap is a volunteer. It just appeared spontaneously in the shingle of my garden. I potted it up and it now happily reappears each year, slowly getting bigger.


Now that the weather has turned a bit cooler, my Runner beans have finally started to produce a worthwhile harvest. Up till now I have only been able to pick the odd few beans here and there, saving them up until we had a viable quantity with which to make a meal, but yesterday I managed to find this lot (450g) all at once! Woohoo!


The plants are covered with flowers again, and this time it looks as if they are setting, so maybe I'll end up with a decent harvest after all. I just need the frosts to stay away for another month at least!


This week I harvested some more of my "Nantes" carrots.


They wouldn't win any prizes for uniformity, but they look (and taste) nice nonetheless - and most importantly they show no sign of Carrot Root Fly infestation, so the Enviromesh has done its job well again.


I'm still picking tomatoes every day. The small ones have just about finished now, but the big ones are ripening "in droves". This "Dwarf Caitydid" plant has produced comparatively few fruits, but they are huge and heavy and I have had difficulty keeping it upright.



Most of the chillis are ripening now, like this "Fish" one, changing from stripy green-and-white to orange and then to red.


My "Hungarian Hot Wax" plant only set four fruits, but they are nice and big. As their colour moves from pale yellowish-green, through orange to red, their heat increases (though they never get blisteringly hot).


Two of them were used yesterday in a Chinese-style Beef and Black bean dish, in lieu of the more normal Red Pepper, and very nice they were too.


I've got a fridge full of cucumbers at present (7 or 8, I think), so I think I can afford not to pick the last few fruits on the plants. They don't look very appealing, and probably contain more seed than flesh.


So, as you can see, there is still lots of veg coming out of my garden. As you know, flowers tend to take second place in my garden and I'm not so good at ensuring that I always have a fine display. One flowering plant that I do love though, is this one - Rudbeckia "Goldsturm" - which I think often looks most appealing when it is beginning to fade, and some of the petals turn russet-brown...sort of "shabby-chic".


5 comments:

  1. Your garden still looks lovely late in the season. It looks like you still have lots of tomatoes, peppers, and beans to come. We're deep into our fall garden plantings and got tons of rain last night, hopefully the seeds didn't get all washed away.

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  2. We started with just two cyclamen hederifolium, one pink and one white, Now they pop up all over the garden even in gaps in paving. We have given loads away tip, Some have even made it to the allotment. The seeds are spread by ants but I doubt the transition from garden to plot was ant driven. No doubt seeds stowed away in the car. They seem to be flowering early this year.

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  3. The cyclamen is so pretty. It was the only plant that I have managed to keep alive that came from my mums (she passed away a few years ago). It sits on the window sill and comes back to life from time to time.

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