Cherokee Purple tomatoes

In view of the interest that many readers have shown in them, I want to publish a couple more photos of my Cherokee Purple tomatoes. This year I am growing them for the first time, so I didn't really know what to expect, apart from what I had seen in pictures on the internet, but I have been very pleased with the results I have managed to achieve. This is a very handsome tomato!

 

Harvest Monday - 19 August 2013

Most of last week I was away on holiday. During my absence my team of trusty Garden Helpers watered and harvested on my behalf, but despite their efforts there was still lots to pick at the weekend:

In the basket are Runner Beans, French Beans, Cucumbers, Tomatoes and Chillis. 



The tomatoes are of several different types - Cherokee Purple, Orkado, Maskotka, Sungella, Tigerella and Sungold.

The chillis are Scotch Bonnet and Cyclon.

Chillis "Cyclon"

In addition to the above I also harvested some more carrots and potatoes. At the request of one of my readers, I'm showing you the carrots in their unwashed state, "with a bit of soil on", just as they come out of the ground. You will see that even so they are pretty clean!

The potatoes were mostly Ratte with the very last of the Orla ones (the latter not pictured here).

Ratte



Not shown anywhere here are the three Beetroot I harvested on Saturday morning. They were in the pan and boiling before I thought about photgraphing them. Likewise, since I am not keeping a tally of my produce I don't think it is worth showing you MORE Runner Beans and "Cobra" French Beans!

I'm putting ths post into Harvest Monday, hosted as ever by Daphne on her blog Daphne's Dandelions

Holidays in Cornwall, August 2013, Part 1

Jane and I have just returned from a family holiday in Cornwall. We shared a self-catering holiday home with our daughters Emma and Fiona, their husbands (Dave and Juan), and Emma's two daughters Lara (4) and Holly (15 months). By our standards, this was a big family gathering! We rented a property called Nanceglos House, owned by the National Trust. It is in the village of Heamoor, a mile or so outside Penzance, and right next door to Trengwainton Gardens (a well-known NT property, much favoured by serious plant-lovers).

The typically Cornish, granite-built house has been added-to in stages over the years, and it is now a very substantial property. It has sleeping accommodation for 9 people (plus cots as required!). Part of the building was formerly the laundry for nearby Trengwainton House, and the lounge still retains some of the features of the laundry, such as the huge doors behind which were positioned long drying-racks that slid out on rails when required. It was lovely to have so much room! A huge kitchen (the family took it in turns to cook for everyone); a dining-room big enough for us all to sit comfortably around a big oak farmhouse table; a lounge with lots of big comfy sofas; a well-maintained garden; a brick barbecue, etc, etc...

This part of Cornwall is full of childhood memories for me. My Dad was born on the Isles of Scilly, and much of our family lived in the Penzance / St.Ives area. I hadn't been to Penzance for a very long time (about 15 years I think), so I was keen to refresh my love for the area and show it off to everyone else.



Actually Emma and Dave have holidayed in Cornwall before so they know it quite well, whereas Fiona's husband Juan had never been there at all. In between the conventional holiday activities we manged to fit in a visit to my Dad's house in Germoe where I lived as a teenager, and to my Grandma's house in Penzance where I must have eaten my first Saffron cake and scones with clotted cream...

Warrens baker's, my favourite baker of Saffron cake and Cornish Pasties

Of course, with the holiday "cottage" being right next to Trengwainton we were ideally placed to enjoy the gardens (and the associated NT tearoom where we had a classic Cornish Cream Tea on a gloriously sunny afternoon!). The gardens are delightfully informal, in a sort of disciplined way, if you know what I mean. Lots of winding (but tidy) paths overhung with Rhododendron bushes, Camellias and Magnolias. Not a straight line in sight!

The main house is not open to the public, but it looks impressive enough from the outside. Not a massive stately home like Chatsworth or Hardwick Hall, but grand nonetheless, in a rather more homely way. You can actually imagine real people living in it.

Trengwainton house

Of course, for me the main attraction was the walled kitchen garden, fully populated with fruit and veg of all sorts, and masses of flowers to attract pollinating insects:

An interesting feature of this part of the garden is the inclusion of a number of angled vegetable beds - arranged so that they get maximum benefit from the sun's rays:





Artichoke




Sweetcorn  - notice two cobs per plant



Scarecrow - "Cinderella's two ugly sisters"

Holly enjoying the little garden chairs thoughtfully provided for the garden's smaller visitors

I want to write more about some of the other places we visited, and some of the wonderful food we ate, but I think I'll stop here for now, otherwise this post will become just too enormous! More to follow soon...



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P.S. Thank you to those people who left me such kind words in their comments on my previous post - "An important announcement".  I shall endeavour not to disappoint!

An important announcement

Mark's Veg Plot has been running for 3 years now - 16th August is my official Blog Anniversary - and during this time I have published a blogpost almost every day. My important news today is that from now on I plan to post whenever I feel like it - probably once or twice a week.

The reasons behind this are complex. Just recently I have realised that a daily blogpost is a big committment, and something which is hard to sustain when you go away on holidays or work, or if a relative is ill and needs extra care. I have also begun to feel that some of what I write is a bit "samey", and therefore perhaps only of interest to new readers, not the loyal Followers.

Cutting down on the frequency of my posts will of course give me more time to spend on gardening and cooking, so hopefully in the future I will be able to give you more quality even though you'll get less quantity. (How many times have I stated this as my philosophy??)

I would like to take this opportunity to say Thank You to all the many readers who have visited my blog during the last 3 years, especially those with whom I interact via Comments. Have you seen the "Flag Counter" widget in my sidebar? It currently shows 194 flags. This means that at least someone from most of the countries in the world has visited my blog at some stage. This makes me happy!

By the way, some of you may be unaware that I publish lots more photos on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and UK Veg Gardeners. Links to all of these are in my sidebar, so if you want to follow me on any of these media just click the relevant button!

Best Wishes

Mark.



An August Miscellany

While you are reading this, I'm away on holiday in Cornwall. Fortunately the Scheduler facility in Blogger is one thing that does seem to work...!  I have put together this collection of miscellaneous photos to give an impression of what my garden is like at this time.

My potatoes are still far from finished. Maybe I over-did things a bit this year, with so many pots of potatoes? I still have a few pots of the Earlies. I only harvest them when we need them, so they are remaining in their pots for the time being. But I also have some Pink Fir Apple on the go, and they are an "Early Maincrop" variety, so will probably be ready at the end of August:



Their foliage is very luxuriant this year, which hopefully is a sign that there will be plenty of tubers down below. The flowers are fully open now, which is usually taken to mean that the tubers will be of a viable size by now.

The Maskotka tomatoes in the raised bed are ripening now, and the cucumber plants have shot up. Some of them are nearly up at the tops of theit supporting sticks (which are about 6 feet above soil level). So far I have harvested about 5 cucumbers, all from the same plant, but there are lots of small ones forming on the other plants too now.

You can't really see them in that photo, but there are Sweet Pepper plants at each corner of the raised bed, and each of them has several fruits on. I'm planning to dry them when they are ripe to make paprika.

My Strawberries have finished now, with the exception of the Alpines. These, as I knew they would, have only produced a tiny crop, but the fruits are amazingly delicious! All the flavour of a traditional Strawberry concentrated in a fruit about a quarter of the size.

Many of the Tomatoes are turning colour now, although the only fully ripe ones so far have been Maskotka and a few Sungold.

This one is Cherokee Purple:

Before heading off on holiday I pricked-out a load of Endive and Radicchio seedlings for Autumn salads. I don't have any space available in the raised beds just now, so they are temporarily going to have to live in pots:

Talking of which... I'm not planning to be short of salads in the Autumn. In the forground here you can see several types of Lettuce seedling:

And here is one of the trusty washing-up bowls playing host to five "Little Gem" lettuces. These ones are small enough to be raised to maturity in a container, whereas the bigger varieties (e.g. "Webbs Wonderful") need a lot more space.

As soon as space becomes available, I will slot in a few Lettuces / Endives / Radicchio wherever I can. In the two big pots which until recently housed my peas, I have sowed two different types of Salad Leaves mix.

I am using the same compost as I used for the peas, since the very quick-growing salads will not require a huge amount of nutrients. If they look as if they are struggling I can always give the a dose of Miracle-Gro or something.

Blueberries - a meagre harvest

In stark contrast to the carrots that I wrote about yesterday, my harvest of Blueberries this year has been very poor. This is about half of it:-

I picked a similar quantity about ten days ago, and there will be another one in a week or two, but the sum total of all three will probably not reach half a pound. A very slim yield from four plants. Much less good than usual, in fact. I put this down to having pruned the plants very severely. I pruned them at the end of August last year, after they had finished fruiting. The purpose of this was to remove some old unproductive stems and stimulate new growth. Well, both of those aims have been accomplished, but the new growth has only recently appeared - far too late to produce fruit for this year. Hopefully next year's yield will be much bigger.

Next year I will have more plants on the go as well.  I have four mature plants at present, and one "adolescent" one which I acquired last Summer. It will probably produce its first fruit next year. I have also just taken delivery of two more tiny plants:

These two are freebies from a magazine ("Just pay £3.99 postage" or something similar). One is called "Powder Blue" and the other is "Pink Lemonade". The latter is presumably going to give me pink berries...

Of course they are far too small to produce fruit next year, but they are nonetheless welcome additions to my collection. You have to keep the succession going, you know!

Meanwhile, this tiny crop is probably just about enough to accompany a bowl of yoghurt for Jane's breakfast.

Carrots - a real success story!

My experience with growing carrots has hitherto not been crowned with glory. Most often the Carrot Root Fly did so much damage that the crop was very sparse. So much so that I gave up growing carrots altogether. Even when I covered them with Enviromesh they didn't do very well. I felt that the mesh prevented enough light getting to the veg underneath, and it was hard to apply the correct amount of water. And then I won a tall wooden planter, and my fortunes changed.

The planter enables me to grow carrots about three feet above ground level, thus avoiding the worst of the low-flying flies. It's not 100% effective, but still much better than anything else I have tried. I sow the carrot seeds into black plastic crates, two of which which fit neatly into the planter. This means that I can replace them whenever I need to. Last year I over-wintered the Strawberries in it. 

I started growing carrots this way 3 years ago. The first year I had modest success (I considered that anything was better than nothing); last year the crop was poor because of the dull wet conditions during Summer, but this year it has all come good. I sowed three different types of carrot seed, all miniature / fast-growing types rather than maincrop ones, simply because space is so limited. I chose "Mini Finger", "Mignon" and "Amsterdam III Sprint". One of the boxes had just Mignon, but the other box had a mix of the other two types.

"Mignon" produced a very small amount of foliage and I though it wasn't doing very well, but when I pulled the first one to see what they were like I was pleasantly surprised. There was a lovely crop of short plump carrots:

"Mignon"

They were also the first to mature. Sown on 29th March and first ones harvested on 13th July.

In retrospect I realise that the ones I labelled in a previous post"Amsterdam III Sprint" were more likely "Mini Finger". They are very long and slender. (Like a pianist's fingers maybe!)



"Mini Finger"



Now I have harvested the first carrots of the third variety, which I'm pretty sure is "Amsterdam III Sprint" (Yes, I know I have said that before...)

"Amsterdam III Sprint"

 These ones are the biggest of the three types - almost big enough to be a maincrop type. Again, I was surprised to see how big they were: from above they don't look much, when when they come out of the ground they are bigger than I had dared to hope.



As my photos demonstrate, the carrots have all been well-nigh perfect. There have been literally a couple with a bit of fly damage, but not enough to be significant. I seriously believe that my success with these carrots is due to their elevation. They were not protected in any other way, and they were grown in perfectly normal proprietary compost. I think that the weather may have played a part (it usually does). Perhaps the very cold conditions in the Spring meant a late arrival for the flies, and the warm sunny weather during July helped the carrots to grow strongly and get big. Whatever the reason, I consider this year's carrot crop to have been a huge success.