End of summer term report

There have been Fruitful Beans, tender green and scarlet emperor, as well as courgettes. Beans are harvested on a regular basis. It does however take a while to produce enough for a family sized dish. With the tendergreen, the more frequently you harvest, the more there is produced by the way of replenishment. It is safe to say, that beans are not found of too much heat. They seem to go all sulky when it is too hot.

Dead aubergine and dead peas

What a drama with the moody aubergine! All seemed to be well. Was producing flowers, leaves were lovely and green. Then wham! Shrivelled up, went yellow. Had thought that the warm weather would do it good, since they do like the warm apparently. But nothing. Kevin the Aubergine, ceased to exist and was an ex-aubergine. This years peas didn’t seem to want to do anything either. Also became mottled and just a bit yucky really. It was the aubergine that was depressing though.

Aubergine analogue study for next year
Diamond, Dancer, Stiato di Napoli, tondo di Piacenza

Yes, for next year, I want to actually produce something! Have been looking for aubergines that might do well in Blighty. Diamond is meant to be used to Ukrainian summers. So I’ve stumbled across this possible candidate amongst some other candidates. I intend to sew at least one or two of each of these alongside the astia that has so far done very well so far.

Aim: to germinate and propagate an aubergine plant in turn producing a crop.

Hypothesis[B][U]: aurbergine plant can be germinated and propagated to produce at least one aubergine during or after the growing season.

Initial germinate and propagation: Window sill or four tiered greenhouse (to be decided at a later date)

Onions and Shallots

Onions and shallots were pulled up this month. There was a generic will be ready in july as growing instructions. So a risk was taken. Most of the tops had fallen over, and were becoming straw like. There was one big fat onion! That was enough satisfaction in itself. What I hadn’t realised, or clocked onto rather, was that in putting the onions into containers, that was effectively square foot gardening. Didn’t realise that til today! There were of course, a few that had bolted, a few that were quite small. But many of them were a nice size. Have so far been very nice with cheese on toast and in salads. The shallots were unbelievable! Most had split. The key thing was the smell, a proper oniony smell. So much so, I am looking into over wintering onions so as to keep going.

Radish experiment

An experiment is underway. Some value for money white icicle radishes compared to some freebie red fleshed radishes. At the moment, both have seedlings. The white ones are somewhat leafier. The key is to keep watering, else everything quite literally goes to pot.



Planted


The following have been sown since I couldn’t resist the urge to sow. I was rather depressed at the sight of empty containers.

Turnip snowball: Sown post Peas that didn’t take off.

Cabbage and Lettuce: These are currently in the greenhouse being kept safe. There is no reason why they shouldn’t come out with the cool weather.

Carrots Ideal Mini vegetable

Proposed planting:
Spring Hero Cabbage
Mayflower Cauliflower
Over wintering Onions and Shallot

A waste of time…..the copper tape that is meant to shock slugs. Silliness.