Playing the Diva

One of the varieties of cucumber which I have grown this year and last is called "Diva" (aka "La Diva"). I have had a few problems with it...

Last year the plant I grew produced mainly male flowers (remember, this is a variety often claimed to be all-female), and it only produced a few fruits late in the season. I queried this with the seed merchant (T and M), who replaced my pack of seeds with two new ones and urged me to have another try. I did. This year's performance has been even worse! I got one solitary fruit, early in August:

But now, when it's surely too late for any fruit to mature, the blessed plant has gone and set about six little fruits all at once!

They are all right at the top of the now very sorry-looking plant. Despite pinching-out it only produced one solitary sideshoot.

T and M told me that "all-female" cucumber plants are still prone to produce male flowers when they are stressed. I don't really think mine have been stressed. I have certainly given them plenty of water and feed, and they haven't had to cope with any extreme weather. I don't know about "Diva"; I think I'll change its name to "Snowflake"!

Maybe I have inadvertently discovered a cucumber variety ideally suited to cooler climates?

I won't be growing this variety again, and next year I will try something different. Do you have any recommendations? (For growing outdoors, of course.)

Furtling

Today I had a furtle in the Roots bed. Sounds very dodgy, doesn't it? The word "furtle" (which can be a verb or a noun) can be defined as "A cursory examination of the contents or details of something."  I was looking to see how my Parsnips are coming on. For several months now (since being sown on March 27th, in fact), they have been out of sight, shielded from view by their covering of protective Enviromesh. I have been aware of their slowly bulking-up foliage straining against the mesh, but until now I have not had a proper look - I've been taking more notice of the Carrots at the other end of the bed.

Well, today I took the Enviromesh off and had that long-overdue proper look:

I think the Parsnip foliage has probably almost stopped growing now. It certainly seems to have flopped a bit. By the time the roots are fully mature the leaves will have completely died down, and we haven't yet reached that stage, and in any case, Parsnips are sweeter after they have been exposed to a bit of frost.

So then I did my furtling, which consisted of scraping away some of the soil to see what size the Parsnip roots are. They look OK, though not huge:

Hopefully they will grow a bit more still, so I don't intend to harvest any for a month or so. Without actually digging up any of the Parsnips it's not possible to see whether they have been affected by the disease canker, which they normally get to some degree or other, but I didn't see any damage around the crowns, which is encouraging.

Meanwhile, although the Carrot patch is looking much more thinly-populated than it was, there are still plenty more carrots in there:

Carrots in the foreground, Parsnips at the far end

I furtled amongst the Carrots too, drawing the soil away from them to have a good look.

One or two of the carrots showed a little slug damage, but there didn't seem to be any damage from Carrot Root Fly, so the Enviromesh has done a good job again. I have been harvesting small batches of carrots as required for several weeks now, and it looks as if this will continue for several more weeks.

After taking my photos I drew the soil back up around the shoulders of the carrots, because if they are exposed to light they go green.

Inspection finished, I put the Enviromesh back on - the Carrot Root Fly season is probably over now, but there's no point taking any unnecessary chances!

Endings

It's always a little sad when the garden begins to look "over". Although I do have some vegetables for the Autumn and Winter, and even some PSB growing away strongly for next year's harvest, most of the contents of my Veg Plot is always stuff that matures in July, August and early September, so on its last legs now.

After yielding a satisfyingly huge crop, the tomato plants have been completely de-leafed now and only have a few fruits left to ripen.

The Runner Beans are past their peak now, though they will probably go on producing pods for at least another month now. Lurking in amongst the foliage there are plenty more bunches of fast-swelling pods like these:

But at the same time, I notice a few like this too - limp and yellowing, ones that will never mature.

My solitary Courgette plant is on its last gasp too. I have removed all the old, mildewed leaves, but the plant is determined to keep producing more.

This week it put out another flower, so maybe I'll get one more fruit before the season ends. Unlike many gardeners, I have not been inundated with courgettes. I think my plant has produced 9 or 10 fruits, and we have managed to keep pace with them. Our attempts to learn to like this vegetable have met with a modicum of success, but I don't think I'll be growing it again next year.

The things I sowed in the pots which formerly held potatoes are looking OK. I have harvested a small but viable crop of French Beans, and now the Carrots and Leeks are shaping-up quite well:



Carrots in ex-potato tubs

Leeks in ex-potato tubs

The Purple Sprouting Broccoli is getting big now - pushing up strongly against the mesh that protects it from butterflies.

I'm reluctant to remove the mesh just yet, because there are still some Cabbage White butterflies about, but it's getting to the stage where keeping the mesh on may be doing more harm than good, because it may be restricting the growth of the plants. I can't raise it any further, because the piece of mesh is not big enough!

It will soon be fruit-picking time for me. This will not take very long! One of the six fruits on my pear tree fell off today, which I interpret as a sign of maturity, so the other five may be picked soon.

Pear "Concorde"

My "Winter Banana" apple tree only produced four fruits this year, and they have all been attacked by some wretched boring (literally) insects (someone suggested Codling Moth grubs). Two of the fruits started to rot, so I picked them and salvaged what I could. Their flesh is surprisingly dense for an apple, but juicy and tasty too. Hopefully next year I'll have more.

Apple "Winter Banana"

My other apple tree ("Laxton's Superb") has not been affected by the boring insects, and has quite a lot of small but very handsome fruit on it. They are supposedly ready for picking in October, so not long now...

The days are drawing in now, and already the nights are much cooler. The garden in the mornings is dewy and festooned with spiders' webs. Soon it will be time to get the cloches and coldframes back into action. After a blazing hot June, Summer never really "took off" this year and Autumn is upon us already.

Rainbow veg

They say that for a healthy diet you should try to eat foods of many different colours, because they each have different nutrients. I think I will probably be healthy enough with these:-

This is what I picked today - carrots, beetroot, tomatoes and chillis.

The beetroot are "Cylindra" ones.

The chillis are a mixture of "Cayenne", "Aji Benito" and "Ring of Fire".

The carrots are also a mix of several different varieties. Most of them are nice and smooth and regular, but then there is this one:

I didn't pick these today, but I wanted to show them off in any case. They are "Ananas" tomatoes. The trio jointly weighed 1119g. The biggest one (front, left) was 425g.

Nearly a glut

As regular readers will know, this year I have been concentrating on Quality rather than Quantity in relation to my veg-growing. Only, the tomatoes don't seem to have got that memo...

Jane and I have been away from home for a week, looking after her elderly mother while her usual carer was on holiday. Returning home, we are now confronted by what could almost be described as a glut of tomatoes.

Today, therefore, we have been "slaving over a hot stove" and converting many of the tomatoes to sauce, semi-dried tomatoes etc. Since we already have quite a lot of plain tomato sauce in the freezer, I made a batch of sauce which included onions, garlic and chillies as well as tomatoes. Likewise, Jane made a batch of semi-dried onions with olive oil, salt and dried oregano, as a variation on the plain versions we had made before going away.

...

Cherry tomatoes "Sweet Aperitif" and "Sungold"

As well as the tomatoes we have had 3kgs of Runner Beans and about 200g of French Beans to deal with. After reserving a decent quantity for eating fresh, the majority of the Runners have been blanched and frozen.

The French beans are from the plants I have grown in the pots which formerly held potatoes. It's not a big yield, but a very welcome second crop, and a nice change from Runners.

Dwarf French Bean "Processor"

Thanks to my team of Garden Helpers, the veg-plot is in pretty good shape despite my absence. The only bad news is that one of my precious Leeks has decided to bolt.


Leek flower-bud or "scape".

I'm going to dig it up shortly, and hope that it is still edible. Let's hope that its siblings don't go the same way!

Images of September

With the glorious Bank Holiday behind us now, we move into September and start thinking about Autumn. I'm still hoping for more good weather though. September is often the best month of the year, and it's too soon to start worrying about frosts and such!

Some of my flowers have only just got going, like this Dahlia "Bishop of Llandaff", for instance. This is its first bloom:

Similarly, the Lobelia Cardinalis is only just beginning to take off. With its dark purple stems and brilliant scarlet flowers, its colour scheme is very similar to that Dahlia!

My Rudbeckia "Goldsturm", normally at its best in early September, has not been very impressive this year, but this is because I lifted it last Autumn and divided it into several smaller plants. These have been getting established and building up their strength this year (only 3 have flowered), and next year I expect I'll have a much better display.

The white Achillea (aka Yarrow) has done well though, putting up several tall flower-stems. They contrast very nicely with the dark leaves of the nearby Purple Sage.

The "Sunspot" Dwarf Sunflowers are all finished now. The biggest one grew to about half a metre tall. I have cut off the flower-head, and I aim to dry it. If the seeds look any good I'll keep a few for sowing next year; otherwise they'll be bird food.

A Sunflower of a different sort has made an appearance in the garden this week. It's a glass sunflower-shaped bird bath.

Jane won this thing in a competition. I have to say that's it's not something we would have chosen to buy! I don't know whether any birds will find it attractive (I think maybe its brightness could put them off), and I have visions of a succession of disappointed bees accidentally falling into the water!

August Bank Holiday

Well, something really unusual has happened - we had beautiful weather for a Bank Holiday weekend! Whenever there's a 3-day weekend, it's normally cold wet and windy, but just this once it was warm, bright and sunny. The daytime temperature here were in the mid 20s for three days in a row. One last spell of Summer before Autumn takes over?

I've not had to do much gardening recently. It's mostly been a case of sitting and watching things grow - and then harvesting them!

Of course there have been more tomatoes to pick...

I'm particularly pleased with this one. It is the first ripe fruit from my "Vintage Wine" plant.

Vintage Wine

Two years ago I set out to grow this variety (amongst many others), but the plant I grew was one of those I gave away because I had too many plants to fit in. Last year I tried again, and the plant I grew was weak and became one of the first to succumb to blight, so I never got any ripe fruit. This year, "Vintage Wine" is the slowest variety to ripen. So far, I have just that one fruit, but there are another 14 decent-sized ones on the plant, plus a few tiddlers, so hopefully it won't be the last.

Vintage Wine (immature)

Over the weekend I managed to freeze nearly 2kgs of Runner Beans, so that's something to look forward to in the depths of Winter.

Runner Beans "Scarlet Emperor"

I have picked quite a few more chillis now. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Jane made some of them into a lovely Sweet Chilli Sauce, which is sweet, sticky and pleasantly warm. If you want the recipe for this, here's a link -- Sweet Chilli Sauce.

Even some of the fruits on my "Aji Limon" - usually the last to mature - are beginning to show signs of ripening. They often go a darker green, almost purple, colour just before turning yellow.



The fruit on my "Laxton's Superb" apple tree (the one I bought last Autumn) are swelling nicely now. In theory, they won't be ready for picking until October, but I have heard lots of people say that their fruit is maturing very early this year, so who knows?

Laxton's Superb

The Endives and Chicories I planted out a couple of weeks ago are looking fine at present (no bolters so far!), although they are a long way off being ready. In the photo below you see Endives at the left, Chicories at the right (next to the Leeks), and Lettuces in the middle.

Endives are particularly temperamental, and seem to bolt at the slightest excuse - a change of weather conditions being the most common. I'm also a bit suspicious about Leeks in this regard, but so far they seem to be behaving themselves properly...