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Garden Diary – Rain, rain go away, we must be due a sunny day?
Well, and then they wonder why us Brit’s talk about the weather all of the time! I think we’d all like the rain to go away for at least a while now. It really does feel like it’s rained on and off all year. Luckily here, we are in no danger from flooding being on top of an ice-age sand and gravel deposit. All that cursing when we first moved in and we initially tried to dig the garden with a spade, then a fork, finally settling on a pick! Now feels like a worthwhile sacrifice for the excellent drainage. I have dashed out in between the showers to pick…
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Garden Diary – Started in the pink, ended with thunder bolts!
What a week of contrasts! After last Sundays big downpour we actually had a good week with plenty of sunshine, but Saturday was the loudest thunder I’ve heard in a very long time. And some poor soul not far from here had their house set on fire by a thunder bolt! I’m pleased to say no one was hurt but the poor lady escaped just with the clothes she was wearing! It’s hard to imagine loosing all of your possessions. I’ve always said that after saving the ‘acting head-gardener’ and the cats, it’s my photographs that I’d want to save. I feel most other things are replaceable. Before the storm…
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Garden Diary – Two new Cat Faces in the garden!
I learned something new about mis-shaped tomatoes this week. The larger ones quite often have slightly strange bottoms but one of them had the strangest bottom I’ve ever seen! I posted it on my three social media platforms and just one person came up with the answer. The name for this strange contortion is ‘Catfaced’, which takes me nicely into a new feline friend I made this week. I was minding my own business watering the greenhouse when in strolled a new young cat, with a rather interesting cat face! Back in the greenhouse one of the new varieties I’ve grown this year ‘Indigo Rose’, finally had a single ripe…
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Garden Diary – Tomato bonanza, there’s even enough for soup!
It’s the peak of the tomato season and those of you that have followed the gardens progress will know my dream before moving here was to grow enough tomatoes to make soup. Well this years tomato bonanza is certainly providing enough for soup, sauce, salad and anything else we can think of that uses tomatoes. The raspberries are starting to ramp up and we’ve had another first of the season with the first ripe pear. My hand was dripping with pear juice as I peeled it ready to share. I think the acting head gardener has eared the right to share the first one! It was a pretty good weather…
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Super Simple Green Tomato Chutney
What do you do with all those left over green tomatoes? Green tomato chutney of course! It’s been the best tomato harvest I’ve ever had, and that’s saying something as I’ve been growing tomatoes longer than any other crop. By September I already knew this was the best harvest I’d ever had, but October just kept on giving. More tomato salads; the fruit bowl with a constant supply of cherry sized tomatoes to snack on; and even more tomato sauce for the freezer. As we slipped into November they just kept on ripening. This is now the second November that I’ve had ripe tomatoes, last year though the supply had…
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Tomato Bonanza
It’s turning out to be one of those, tomato bonanza years. I think it’s because we had the really hot sun early on which stimulated their growth and ripened fruits early, but then the cooler temperatures slowed them down. Whatever the reason though I’m not complaining, as I now have many portions of delicious tomato sauce in my freezer. Most of you know by now that the first food crop I ever grew were tomatoes and I’ve grown them every year since. If I only had space to grow one crop, tomatoes would be it. The flavour of a homegrown tomato is simply unbeatable, especially if you pick the right…
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Disaster in the Greenhouse
Well I had such a lovely morning planned out. One of my favourite jobs of the year, planting the tomatoes in the greenhouse, when disaster struck! The garden apprentice (otherwise known as husband) was with me, as he has to help me with the heavy bags of compost to replenish last years. He said, ‘what’s that weed?” I started to pull it, then gently started to uncover it’s roots. I said, “it looks like a potato”. More uncovering in sued. The gardening apprentice said, that’s no potato! We dug deeper and finally realised with dread, that it was Ground Elder!!! Or it’s rather unpronounceable Latin name Aegopodium Podagraio. I think…
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Tomatoes in November!
Well, I’ve never had homegrown tomatoes in November before! Well at least not red ones! They usually start to die back and get a bit mouldy as the weather starts to cool down and the days start to draw in, but not this year. Tomatoes in a Heatwave It’s been a most extraordinary weather year, with heatwaves so hot that it was still too hot at 7pm to sit out and eat dinner. Who’d have ever thought that would be the case in Britain! It meant that the main harvesting season was not as good as usual, it was just too hot. I suppose if heatwaves become the new norm,…
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Tomato Sauce – A Very Simple Recipe
Transform your homegrown Tomatoes into delicious Tomato sauce for the freezer! Tomatoes were the first edible crop that I grew and once I tasted that first homegrown tomato I was hooked! I’ve grown tomatoes every year since, which is now more years than I care to remember. I initially only had the tiniest vegetable patch and I only had enough space for four tomato plants. Although they were outside, they were against a south facing wall, but I still struggled to get them all to ripen before the end of the season. I dreamt of having a greenhouse and growing enough tomatoes to make tomato soup. Well dreams sometimes come…
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Brandywine Tomato Salad – It’s too easy to be so delicious!
This tomato salad is so simple, that it’s hard to believe quite how delicious it is. The reason for this is the ingredients! I came across this tomato variety years ago when I read James Wong’s book ‘Grow for flavour’. As the title suggests, it’s all about growing food for flavour above anything else. I’d always liked the idea of a large beefsteak tomato, but they always let me down on the flavour front. Brandywine on the other-hand are absolutely delicious, packed with flavour and very few seeds, making them less wet. They are not always the most attractive looking tomato, and they can grow to quite enormous sizes. The…
