And Indoor Plants...

Our other reason for visiting the garden centre was getting some proper pots for Rob's Chili Pepper plants - the big one in the middle was a christmas present from Nicky and the two smaller ones to the side were recent gifts from uncle Nick, who grew them from seedlings.  They are now happily settled in the kitchen and are already showing signs of fruiting :D

I couldn't manage a visit to the garden centre without coming home with a new plant; this little beauty is a Haworthia Fasciata, a type of succulent, and should be very hard to kill!  Whilst I seem to manage fine with outdoor plants my indoor plants always seem to die on me so I shall be trying very hard to keep this little fellow alive so he can brighten up my study over the winter.

Outdoor Plant Update

 
I went to the garden centre today to buy yet more compost to pot out the strawberry runners - they were beginning to look a little cramped in their pots so I've moved them all into larger ones (thank you uncle Nick!) where they will hopefully be able to see out the winter.  There are three plants in each of these pots/tubs so they have approximately the same amount of room as the ones I grew this summer - I'm thinking that I may try and make some sort of raised bed for them next year but commercial kits are looking very expensive so they may live in the pots for a while first!

 I also picked up these curved bamboo canes for the raspberries - they've been suffering a little when the wind gets up so when Rob spotted these I knew they'd be perfect.  They're a little more decorative than straight canes and they should be more likely to stay upright too (also no eye-poking out!)

Dried Tomatoes

I've been stockpiling cherry tomatoes all this week, they're ripening like crazy and there are only so many times you can eat tomatoes in a week before they get a bit boring, so on Saturday I decided it was time to do something with them.  Some sort of pasta sauce seemed like the most obvious use for them but the receipes I found all wanted them skinned.... I think not!

After a bit of searching I came across the idea of oven-drying them (an english solution to sun-dried tomatoes!) so I enlisted Rob's help to squish all the innards out of the little tomatoes and then left them in the oven for several hours with some olive oil and herbs until they came out all chewy and dry.  They taste just like the sun-dried tomatoes I've bought before with very strong tomato flavour (which to be honest I'm not all that keen on!) so I'm thinking I will try chopping them up and baking some tomato bread later on or just let Rob eat his way through them in salads etc.  Much better off this way than gradually going off in the fridge though - for now they are tucked up in the freezer until I get inspired to use them!

Cake!

From This...

Whilst not strictly made with produce from my own garden I think this still qualifies for a mention here - this is the chocolate and courgette cake that I made to celebrate passing my latest round of ACCA exams.  I used this recipe from the BBC Good Food website which calls for two courgettes both of which were donated from other peoples' gardens - a lovely yellow one from Angela and a more traditional green one from Domo at work.

To This!

It was a blissfully easy cake to cook and was delicious - much less rich than your average chocolate cake and with a lovely spongey texture to it, almost like a brownie but much lighter!

Agapanthus!

Isn't she pretty!

Om nom nom

There are only so many pictures I can show of plants-with-fruit-on before it starts to get a bit repetitive so I'm making a bit of a detour onto the subject of just what exactly I'm going to do with all these things once they've grown.  Entertainingly I hadn't really given this much thought when I was planting and I think next year I may try and grow things that will be useful for eating.  Nonetheless it makes a nice change to have some garden-fresh veg in our meals and it has prompted me to cook some new things because there's no way I'm letting it go to waste after all the effort I put into growing it!

And so I present - Salmon with Broad Bean cous cous and cherry tomatoes

This was from a recipe on goodtoknow.co.uk and was both tasty and stupidly easy to cook... my favourite combination :D  In short, stick the salmon in the oven, boil the beans in water just before it's ready and cover the cous cous with water per packet instructions, combine cous cous & beans, add a little lemon juice and serve!

I'd never eaten a broad bean before and was pleasantly surprised by them... probably not enough to go out and buy some but I shall certainly be eating the rest of the ones I've grown.

For my Daddy....

Apparently my dad is very jealous of my speedy tomatoes - his are taking their time and just about at the 'pretty flowers' stage whilst I'm very near to having tomatoes for my salad.  Being the lovely daughter that I am I thought I'd do a whole post of tasty tomato pictures just to show him what's still to come (or praps just rub it in a bit more ;p).... dad, this one's for you! 

The Indoor tomato - recovering well from its fall

The hanging tomatoes almost have more fruit than leaves!

Different plant... honest!

The grow bag tomatoes are still all green

And finally the slowest of the lot - the 'extra' tomatos are limping along - the poor things managed to blow over in the wind and lost some branches.  I think they'll make it but they are definately looking worse for wear at the moment.  Just to clarify that bag is *very* heavy; I can kind of shuffle-walk it around if need be but that's about it - the force it must take to topple it would be pretty considerable; when I said we'd had  some bad weather lately I really did mean it!

Where did those come from?

The last couple of days we've had absolutely horrible weather in Southampton but today I managed to catch a break in the rain and dash out to check on the plants!

I was a little dissappointed when I looked at my broadbeans because they've lost all of their pretty white flowers

But then I looked a bit closer and saw these absolutely massive beans that have sprung in to being over the last few days - the scale is a bit hard to tell from the piccy but the largest are almost the length of my hand!  I don't think I have ever eaten a broad bean intentionally before so I may have to go find some recipes.  At the moment this looks pretty good:

Penne with ricotta, broad beans and mint
250g of pasta (anything short and vaguely tubular will do)
200g broad beans
125g ricotta
1 large bundle of fresh mint
Fresh lemon (juice and zest)
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

Cook the pasta in boiling water - you can even add the beans at the end to save on washing up. Put in a bowl and stir in the ricotta, lemon juice and zest, and crushed raw garlic. Drizzle the oil on top, sprinkle over the mint and eat.

Recipe by Kate Carter from an article at guardian.co.uk

An Update

I spent most of the afternoon out in the garden today tidying up various plants and settling in a new one. 

This was an impulse purchase from Thompson & Morgan with Tesco Clubcard vouchers; the vouchers were due to expire and needed using up so I purchased a new blueberry bush (and some winter potatoes but they're due later) to use them up.  This little fellow turned up in the mail and is now settling in beside its big brother

I also have some 'new' strawberries - the existing plants have started putting out runners which I have been trapping in little pots around the big one and these fellows have finally grown big enough to strike out on their own (and make way for even more new runners!)  Jake unfortunately seems to consider 'strawberry runners' close enough to 'string' to be worth chasing round the garden.... I may have to keep an eye on my little ones!

The agapanthus is doing very nicely in it's pot by the stairs and looks like it's thinking about flowering soon

The rhubarb is also continuing to grow well, occasionally one of the smaller leaves seems to wilt and die but they always get replaced by new ones so i'm not too concerned about it!

This raspberry plant has got me totally confused!  I had read that the type of raspberry I had would fruit on last years canes.... but it's fruiting on new growth so I think I need to do a bit more reading!  Still... it looks like I might get 4 whole raspberries to eat this year so there's an unexpected treat!

The strawberry plants seem to either be doing very well or very badly; some of them (like this one!) are putting out beautiful crops of tasty strawberries whilst others have broken their stems and the fruit has rotted :(  I think I will need to modify these bags if I use them again next year or maybe look for a better pot with more rounded edges to give the fruiting stems a little support.

 All the tomatoes are fruiting now but the hanging baskets are definately leading the way - I can't believe that such a small plant can be so liberally covered in fruit - salads are going to awesome this summer.

And finally  my beautiful beans are thriving - this one is now going so well that i've given it a 'trellis' onto the roof of the shed!  I should probably have cut it down but its got flowers on the 'overflow' now so it seemed a shame to take them off.  I did think about tying on another cane but realised that there was no way I would be able to support it so left it at 2

I know what it is!

The mystery is solved!  I am growing Broad Beans which means that I appear to have a Spring GroBox and should thus also eventually see Onions, Peas, Spinach, Carrots, Ruby Chard, Tomatoes, Radish and Lettuce springing up!

The Mystery Plant....

It's getting more mysterious by the day!  The mystery plants have started flowering and I still have no idea what they are... but they're very pretty :D

I wanna know what it is already!

The green beans are also starting to bloom and putting out some gorgeous red buds

The strawberries are being cursed by their own success; unfortunately as the strawberries get plumper they weigh down the stems supporting them and several have bent over the edge of the plastic pockets damaging the plant so that nutrients aren't getting through and the stem (and strawberries :o) die.  I think I need to rig some curved protectors so they don't damage themselves but for now this cunning arrangement of canes will have to do!

On the plus side they're putting out runners like crazy and as long as I can keep them healthy I should have a truly ridiculous number of strawberry plants next year!

All grown up

My little plants are getting all grown up now and showing signs of fruiting. I imagine I'll get used to it over time but at the moment I still get a lovely sense of wonder when I look out of the back door and see my drab stone patio covered in lovely vibrant growing things!

Just a quick post today but here are some photos of the growing that's been going on:

No sign of fruit yet but it's definately getting 'bushier'

These little guys are growing so well I had to tie on extra canes to keep them going... if they get much taller I'm going to need a ladder to harvest them tho ;p

Apparently Rhubarb does just fine in pots - that leaf at the bottom is easily 3 dinner plates in size!

Even the latecomers are getting on well - this is the Raspberry cane that used to just be a stick!

It's growing well... and I still have no idea what it is!

I think 'Yummmmm' about covers this one

The tomatoes seem to have recovered from their brush with the frost but I think I need to seperate them out a bit more; at the moment they look rather like one mega-plant!

Oh Dear.... My poor indoor tomato had a nasty run in with the wind - it was a lot more spindly that the outside tomatoes and got knocked over :(  It's now tied to the fence and shortly after this picture I removed all the broken limbs... poor thing looks a little bare now but I'm hopeful it might make it through as the top is still growing nicely.

It seems I forgot to take a photo of the potatoes but they too are thriving - bushy greens are now springing out of the top of the grow bag and i've banked it up with compost to the top. Tasty taties are anticipated!

Potatoes

I also managed to plant the potatoes yesterday - they have taken up residence in a nice big grow bag where they will have plenty of room to grow; I planted 1 of each variety so I should get some nice choice of potatoes in a couple of months time. They look a little bit boring now but if Angela's are anything to go by I should have some lovely leafy plants soon - just need to keep topping them up with compost so that they have plenty of room to grow.

Raspberries!

We nipped into B&Q yesterday to get some more compost for the garden and sitting out there on the end of an aisle were some lovely looking Raspberry canes for only £5. I couldn't resist them. The only problem was I had nowhere to put them, fortunately I was saved from my dilemma by a 4 for 3 pot offer! Okay, so in the end my £5 Raspberries led to a £40 bill but hey... I saved a tenner overall, and I have Raspberries!

They are of the Glen Ample variety which means that they are summer fruiting so I won't get any Raspberries until next year but I shall look forward to delicious fruits next year.

New Arrivals

These are the beans John, from my mum's office, gave to my dad to grow in his garden and which dad gave to me 'cos he didn't have room for them!  A welcome addition to my little vegetable collection these guys are inhabiting the tower pots which we brought with us from the old house.  I've given them a fresh lot of compost to grow into and some nice tall canes to grow up - hopefully I can train them up the fence when they get bigger as I think they're going to outgrow their canes fairly rapidly if dad's are anything to go by!

We Have Strawberries!

Okay, so they're not exactly ready to eat yet but how awesome do they look!

The neighbours flowers seem jealous... these little ones have crept under the fence to come and join us and, if I am not mistaken, they might be additional strawberries for us!

Fruity Update

Nothing much to say about these guys - just happily getting along and growing bigger by the day:

It has one more leaf than it used to!

Also much more leafy

Look at all those flower buds

Herbs

The herb pot is doing beautifully in its new spot in the sun - the only one that didn't make it through was the basil but you can't see that from this angle so I can pretend it's all okay!

Tomato Update

First a look at the outdoor tomatoes - I didn't think that these guys had done very well but looking at the photo from a few weeks ago they seem to have pretty much doubled in size so maybe I was being pessimistic:

As first planted

Look - almost as tall as a water bottle!

But then we look at the indoor tomato:

What a monster!

Oh yes... it rather puts the others to shame! Admitedly it's not quite as tall as the perspective in that shot makes it look but using the water bottle as a reference you can see that it's doing really rather well.  In short... tomatoes like warm protected places much more than nasty cold gardens... who'd have guessed!

New Arrivals

We went back to Rob's parents last weekend and Angela very kindly gave me some new plants for my garden.  It was her patio-garden which made me realise that vegetables really didn't need a flower bed to grow and her  amazingly well stocked greenhouse puts my humble collection to shame!  She gave me two lovely hanging baskets with tumbing tomatoes in (and the brackets to hang them!) so now I shall have lots of wonderful varieties of tomatoes come summer.  She also gave me some potato tubers to grow - I'd been tempted to buy some of these myself but when it came to laying down money for plants I was swayed by the sweeter fruits and rather neglected the staples!  I shall use a spare growbag for these and plant them when I have a free evening.

I'm assuming these will eventually grow downwards!

 My final gift was an Agapanthus (awesome name for a plant!) in a lovely big pot which will add some prettiness to my fairly functional garden!  It is a plant split off from one in their garden and given it's own pot so it's lovely and bushy already and is sitting opposite my herbs.

Agapanthus,agapanthus, agapanthus.. never stops being an awesome word!