Salad Days

We finally harvested our first ripe tomatoes - we seem to have waited an age for this event. These are now eaten and there is very little evidence of any more ripening soon.

These tomatoes - Gardeners' Delight - were growing in the plot greenhouse. The plants there seem to be fruiting better than the ones in the garden greenhouse.

It's usually the opposite way round. The plants are looking really healthy but we would like the fruits to ripen soon. Maybe we should hang up a few bananas to coax things along.

We grow an outdoor variety of cucumber - Burpless Tasty Green. So far we have harvested one small fruit but the plants are the best we have grown and have lots of baby cucumbers and flowers.



Lettuce has also proved a challenge this year. It's grown but so have the weeds surrounding it. The weather has prevented us visiting the plot as often as usual, and as there has always been some more important task needing attention, the lettuces have had to struggle on. The consequence has been not much useable lettuce. Now we have planted more lettuce and this time through weed control fabric.

So far we have used weed control fabric for the carrots and strawberries - both seem to have worked and we've planted brassicas through it which seems to be working so let's see how the lettuce fare. The idea is that if we can cut down on some of the weeding we can concentrate on areas left undercovered - well that's the theory. When we remove the fabric it will be labelled so we can reuse it for the same crops next year.

Radish needs to be sown regulary. The roots are very sneaky - one minute there is nothing at all and the next the plants have gone to seed. The trick is to catch them midway between the two extremes. Not easy when they are growing on the plot where we can't keep a daily look-out. We have managed some harvesting though.

We are thinking of having a few salad crops in the garden next year where we can keep them under closer observation.

Then there are the spring onions. What is it with spring onions these days? We used to grow them with no problems at all but now they seem so very slow. We thought it was something we were doing but one of our plot neighbours was complaining of exactly the same thing. We picked the first spring onions on 16 August after sowing on 20 May and some of these were pathetically small. Three months before achieving a tiny harvest seems ridiculous as we used to sow successionally throughout the season and have a regular supply. We've tried different varieties and also tried growing in large pots of compost but it doesn't seem to make any difference.

As for celery - it's our first serious attempt at growing it and whether we will achieve a harvest or not is anyone's guess.

PS: have you seen the photo of our exotic visitor on Martyn's blog? We haven't had any suggestions so far about what type of parrot (if it is a parrot) this is. Can anyone help with identification?