Tomatoes before and after

Sentries of the greenhouse

These litle beauties keep bad stuff away from the tomato plants apparently.  Not quite sure if it's slugs or,black fly but they seem to work as the tomatoes are doing very nicely.  French Marigolds by the way.  From seed.  You can eat the flowers too although I haven't tried that . . . yet.  

Tomatoes

A bit more manageable harvesting tomatoes because they conveniently ripen at different times.  

Get the red ones and leave the green ones until later - unless you're doing Fried Green Tomatoes of course (is that even something real?)

Barbecued courgettes

Courgettes coming thick and fast now but still taking them while they're not too big.  Elaine says that they could be a biit darker (green) but, whatever, they taste great sliced up and grilled.

Peas

Nearly enough for more than me!

Garlic

Harvested a week or so ago and dried out in the shed so I thought I'd try my hand at plaiting.  They're a bit smaller than they should be because I did plan them a little late.  Not bad though and they'll be superb next year.

Courgettes, tomatoes, peppers and peas

Tonight's pick.  The beauty of having lots of courgette plants is that you can take a load of them when their super small with the flowers on.

Tomatoes coming strong but the peas still a disappointment.  I think that they are planted a bit too close together actually so it's worth another go next year.

Few green peppers, a bit small but cute aren't they?

Peas - some thoughts

Starting to harvest peas now and it's clear that they are a tricky thing to do in terms of actually providing food for the table.  It's been quite satisfying to get the plants past the slugs and the pigeons and they are fairly attractive plants, if a little wild. 

There are quite a few pods but all a different stages of maturity which makes it hard to pick enough for a meal.

Here's a pod with a nice set of fully grown peas. (For a sense of scale the peas are the size of peas)

So, you pick a stack of pods which seem to be ready and leave the rest to carry on growing, open them all up and this is what you get.

Ok, not that many pods but they were the ones that seemed ready.  Enough for a single portion or maybe a few MasterChef type plates where I could scatter a dozen or so in an artful manner I guess.

More planting -Lettuce and Fennel

 All the potatoes lifted now and acres of bare soil.  

Decided to plant some random stuff, partly to see it grow and maybe to even get some more food.  Rocket, Lettuce (Lollo Rosso) and Fennel.  Tiny seeds that grow quickly (7-14 days) and will then need thinning out.

Potato sorting by size

May seem to indicate marginal levels of OCD but I thought it important to sort the potato harvest into size order (the substantial harvest of the Nicola variety in particular).  Not completely from smallest to largest but just into general categories, to make it easier when cooking something to pick the best size.

4 categories; tiny - not sure what for; small -  for salads etc.; big - probably cut in half before cooking; massive - for baking or chips.

Very satisfying half an hour (if only slightly worrying).

Here's the results showing a nice normal distribution curve.

A couple of closups of Tiny and Massive (same size trays)