Time please, ladies and gentlemen

I have called time on the tomato season. Not because we were running out, but because frankly I was just sick of watering every day. An Indian summer is a nice thing, but needing to go the greenhouse regardless of whatever else is happening has been a pleasureable and rewarding thing for the last six months, but enough is enough.

We have about 5 lbs of green tomatoes for making chutney and about 2 pounds of lovely yellow, red, black and cherry tomatoes for eating up. Excellent. I've composted the plants and used the contents of the grow bags to fill the old wheelbarrow I found (along with some bricks and some new drainage holes) and this will be full of Nigella, marigolds and nasturtiums next year.

Potato Harvests

The spud harvest was dug up today. It was a little disappointing as we only really made the same weight in potatoes as was planted, with the exception of the Maincrop, (Desiree) which doubled their weight. However, they are all edible and tasty. The Salad's (Charlotte) did the worse barely making their own weight.

The lack of weight is not really surprising though. Firstly, they all went in very,very late, June I think, so about 3 or 4 months behind schedule. On top of that they were planted in a bed that hadn't been manured after the greedy brassicas had taken all the nutrients out of the soil. Finally the Earlies ( Maris Peer and Pentland Javelin), had to contend with a huge number of extremely vigorous, self seeded nasturtian plants that we were too sentimental about to keep under control.

Next year we intend to get some more exciting potato varieties than those available in B & Q. We did attend a Potato Day at Stonham Barns early in the year. However we arrived quite late and then I spent most of the time breast feeding Daniel in the car. Gavin said he was too scared to buy the potatoes he wanted (which were the very ones I wanted), in case he got it wrong - as if I were that scary and evil! Anyhow, hopefully now we will both be trusting his judgement in future, as it seems we both want the same thing anyway.