A post about Tomatoes

I'm sure there are those amongst my regular readers who will be exceptionally excited about the fact that this blog is focused entirely on tomatoes.

It is going to be a short update, however.

First of all, I was hoping someone could help me out with what this is. All of my tomato plants have this strange bobbles all over them. They are hard to touch and cover the main truss and stems.

So any advice / should I be concerned?

Secondly, I am very pleased to present this picture which shows two of the tomato plants that I gave away a few months ago, coming on very nicely, and with about 30 fruit developing well.

Thanks, Matt, for sending me the picture and allowing me to post it.

It's great to see that someone else is having a good amount of success with the plants :)

Anyway, that's it for now folks.

Digging Onions and Eating A Tomato (plus other things)

This blog post could have been split into a couple of different updates, I reckon, but I've had a busy week and haven't been able to find the time to do a post every time I've wanted to.

However, that just means that you get to enjoy this post all the more, as it has been marinating in my mind all week.

So, the first update that I could have written involves further harvesting of onions. I also went to harvest the garlic but it isn't ready yet.

This is the garlic. It is not ready for harvesting, as you can see because there is still green growth above every bulb.

The onions, however, are obviously ready as you can see from the fact the growth above ground is dead.

The onions, and one batch of shallots that I pulled, are now drying on the mat in the Living Room. I have been eating my own onions regularly this week and they taste outstanding.

The parsnips are looking pretty good - I'm not sure when I'll know they are ready though.

Some of the cabbage is looking almost cabbage shaped too - this will be tasty when I get round to it, maybe some time this week will be time for my first home-grown-cabbage-meal.

The sweetcorn is still looking good too - I may have to stake out some of it as it's getting quite tall now.

So, that was the first blog post that I could have done. It was good, wasn't it.

And here comes the second (exceptionally geeky and excited) blog post. This one is called "Eating A Tomato"

So the tomato that was starting to turn red in my last blog post was knocked off accidentally about 20 minutes after I took the photograph but I put it on the windowsill for a day and it finished ripening off nicely after a day or so.

So the next day I took my prize and joy into the office and ate it.

Oh yeah!

Me looking proud with my first tomato.

Me about to bite down into my first tomato.

Can I just say that this tomato was the nicest tomato I've ever eaten. Seriously.

I now have another tomato very close to ripe, and LOADS more across the outside plants.

I spotted this little bee flitting around pollinating my tomato flowers :) so there will be a LOAD more coming soon.

Four more tomatoes growing a-pace on some of the outside plants, taking in a super dooper arty farty way.

Chillis growing very well on the downstairs inside plants, and there are a lot of other flowers on these plants, whereas the plant on the upstairs bedroom windowsill has no more flowers unfortunately.

More flowers on the chilli plants outside, which are just about surviving the onslaught from the massive slug infestation this country is suffering under.

So there you are, two blog posts in one, aren't you lucky, and lots and LOTS of pictures.

Cheers

First Red Tomato

This is a very short and very excited blog post, as I have JUST noticed, while watering the inside tomatoes, that the first tomato is now starting to turn!

So, here is a picture of it!

And here is another, slightly closer, picture

I'm keeping my eyes on the other tomatoes that are growing, and will probably post similarly excited photographs when they start to ripen.

Cheers

A burger with home grown lettuce and onion

Today my blog post is a celebratory one.  It is a blog post which contains the "why" for all the "what" and "how" that fills all the other posts.

Yesterday, I had a BBQ picnic in the back garden with my lovely girlfriend, and the onion and lettuce that we ate were grown from the very soil we were sitting on!

This is why you grow you own food; so you can eat it. This may seem like an obvious statement, but sometimes I have to remind myself.

Anyway, obviously, my camera was handy and so I took a large number of photographs of the inaugural tasting of my home grown onions (and repeat performance of the same of my lettuce) and I present them to you below.

Fresh onions, dried for the last two weeks or so on the mat by the back down, still with dirt on their outer skins

The first cut, a lovely and juicy onion it is too

Skinned and ready for slicing

Sliced and ready for dicing

Diced and ready for eating.... ok ok I'll stop now

Starting to make up the burger; home grown onions on the left, home grown lettuce (picked about five minutes at this point) on the right, and lovely super strong cheddar in the middle. I cannot wait until I am eating my own cheese and using home made barms too!

J making up her burger; Profanosaurus Rex as a plate.

The burger meat nestled perfectly on the lettuce, cheese making the base

Adding the final touch; the onion

Mmmmph mmhph mmmmph tasty!!

So there you have it. Are you hungry now?

Oh, while we were eating this I noticed a dragon fly sat on a brick so took a couple of pictures of it too

Isn't nature wonderful.

I still haven't got round to digging out the potatoes. I'm so bad.

Tomatoes, ants, a spider and a frog

Unfortunately, while the title of this blog may sound like the beginning to one of those not-very-funny jokes, it isn't.

What is IS (to the certain joy of some of my regular readers) is a blog post with multiple pictures of tomatoes.

While I was hanging the washing out today I noticed that I appear to have a large number of tomatoes suddenly appeared on the outside plants; I have no new ones on the inside one though.

So, without any further ado...

An outside tomato!

Another couple of outside tomatoes

And again

A tomato, and a chive flower

Chives.

Another thing that I noticed while I was putting the washing out was about a million ants crawling and climbing everywhere, a lot of them with wings...

Yes, all those little black dots are ants... THAAAHHHSANDS of em!

While I was avoiding the ants by standing on the grass I noticed this TINY frog hopping around. We seem to have a LOT of frogs in our garden, I saw a massive one the other day when I was pulling weeds around the pond.

I saw this angle, and couldn't resist taking a picture. I like spiders as they eat horrible biting mosquitoes and dirty flies.

I know this picture isn't really that different from the update the other day, but I'm so excited by the progress on the chillis that I have another couple from the Bedroom Window Sill Plant

The largest chillis

Slightly smaller chillis starting to go for it.

And finally, the chilli plants down stairs have a fair crop going on them now too

Lots of little chillis on the downstairs plants.

So there you are, tomato updates and wildlife and chillis.

I will be digging out the tomatoes soon I think, this weekend maybe, so I'll update when I've done that.

My onions and shallots have dried very successfully by the back door just on the floor; which is good. When my cooker gets fixed I'll eat them!

Cheers

Rain rain go away (oh, and some chilli pictures)

The sunny weather which tempted me out into the garden yesterday morning lasted until about 8pm and then the thunder arrived and with it, the downpour.

The rain literally bouncing off the carport roof.

Rods of rain lashing down in the back garden.

Eventually however the rain cleared.

A rainbow after the rain finally cleared.

Unfortunately the broken cooker was not fixed in time for me to cook my fajitas with onions and chillis grown in the garden, and lettuce on the side from the garden. So the "cookery guide" addition to this blog will have to wait til next week when the cooker is fixed.

The chillis ready for eating now on the plant on the bedroom window sill.

The downstairs chilli plants are now finally fruiting too, and this flower is still hanging on, despite the fruit developing at it's base.

I am going to start a section on this site about what I've learned, and techniques I'm going to use going forwards... I would be very happy for anyone to contribute advice and ideas via the comments section so don't keep that knowledge to yourself.

Cheers for reading.

A general status update

Once again I have been out in the garden today, it being the first day there's been any sun at all.

I cut the grass, took the little greenhouse things down for the year (they will probably next be used when I leave the country!) and cleared around generally.

So, without any further ado, here is my update.

The main potato bed. I have not harvested any yet. This looks like a massive failure to be fair. I will try and dig these out tomorrow and photograph it if possible.

The potatoes in the tyres are possibly slightly better, I'll be getting them out tomorrow too if possible.

Some rotten Shallots. These pulled out by accident and they look like they're rotting in the ground slightly; probably not that surprising considering how much rain we've had.

The Stuttgarter Giant Onions are still looking healthy though.

Sweetcorn growing well! I've been meaning to take photographs of this for a while. This is looking pretty good I'd have said.

Cabbage patch :) Some of these are improving quite well, some have been eaten completely by slugs

The apples on the little apple tree are amazing now. A couple have been lost to dropping off, but I am going to be picking and eating these over the next week or so.

The second batch of lettuce, coming through very well indeed. I can't wait to eat these.

I MAY have another blog later as I had plans to have Fajitas tonight with my beautiful lady, using onions, chillis and lettuce grown by myself, but the electrics in my kitchen have blown so we may have to put that off for another time.  I really hope the sparky can come and fix it today so we can do this though!

Anyway, enjoy, I'll be back soon (I have SO many chillis on their way, but no more tomatoes, in case you were wondering.)