More Cucumbers Than I Thought and Tennis News

 Yesterday there was a good match with the young good looking 23 year old Italian Flavio Cobolli (I'd never heard of him 'til this year) beating Cilic. Both had knocked out British players previously. Then I turned over and found Djokovic was a set down - losing it 6-1 !- did that last? No! He won.

There are a large number of Italian men playing nowadays, when I was a teenager the tournament had mainly American and Australian players, now it's Spain and Italy who seem to be bringing on new young players all the time.

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My two cucumber plants are growing well but I've not really left them enough space - I'm used to growing in pots rather than the growbags I got to use this year to save shifting heavy pots later and to save money on compost. I can just about get the watering can nozzle between all the leaves and into the compost for watering and even though I nipped off some growing tips the plants are still heading across the floor and will soon be out the door!

There were definitely two cucumbers hiding among the leaves but turned out there were 5. [These are the two plants that I bought at a boot sale and are they shorter rather than longer variety].

Plenty enough to make some of  the Sweet and Sour Cucumber pickle that I enjoyed so much last winter. The recipe is on the separate recipe page but I decided not to use onions in it this year as I like the chunks of cucumber and celery but the small bits of onion are a pain to fish out of the jar ( I need a Victorian pickle spoon - those Victorians had something for every eventuality!). I also don't use the cloves.

It made just 3 and a bit 12oz jars, which won't last me long through the winter so I'm hoping for another good flush of cucumbers to make more.

Back Soon

It's Half Past June Tomorrow, Things I didn't Know and Thank You

Thanks to everyone for comments all week. I often don't look at the laptop at all in the evenings so don't always catch comments from places behind us timewise until next day, by which time it seems a bit late to reply. But I do read and appreciate every comment - I'd be talking to myself without comments, and I do plenty of that anyway!

Thank you also to people who have clicked the follower button to get past the 850 which it was stuck on for months, except when it went down to 848 one day. Not sure it's accurate with ups and downs so frequently.

Racing through the month as usual, I've watched some of the Queens Club tennis women's matches but I'm looking forward more to the men's matches next week. The weather has been lovely, we've had the best of it in the East.

 BiL popped over with the huge plastic tub that I'd asked him to drill drainage holes in and helped me lift the bay tree from it's old pot into the new bigger one. I need to give it a feed of something then it should be OK for a few more years. 

In the greenhouse the cucumbers are looking the best, tomatoes are a bit lanky without many trusses as yet but I spotted the first tomato has set. Peppers showing signs of greenfly, I'm keeping a close eye on the leaves. I've netted the long raspberry bed, they are going to be early this year which is good as there'll be no strawberries from BiL, his strawberry patch is poor this year after many good years.

And the things I didn't know?

 I didn't know #1.............. that 'they' had altered the goalposts and from April the amount payable for car road tax had changed.  We bought our Fiesta, not new but nearly, in 2017 when we needed something more reliable than our very old Fiesta for getting to Addenbrooks hospital every week. It had a big advantage as it just fell into a category when cars with less than a certain amount of CO2 emissions didn't have to pay any road tax. A government thing to get people to buy smaller cars.  It's not needed any payment for re-taxing since, until this year when the reminder came and I found I had to pay £20. I don't mind paying £20 as it's much less than many cars owners have to pay but no one told me it had changed. 

I didn't know #2.......... that the new umbrella that I won in a raffle last year and hadn't seen for months was under the front passenger seat of the  car - I found it wedged into a small space against the seat runner fixings thingy. I assumed I'd left it somewhere and it was lost forever.

I didn't know #3................that my annoying knee problem is probably the start of osteoarthritis until I saw a physio during the week. Here in Suffolk we can refer ourselves to a physio without seeing a doctor. Fill in a form online and then they email helpful exercises - which I'd been doing like a 'good girl'! Then after a while they contact to see how you are and to book an actual appointment. 

 Osteoarthritis  used to be called "wear and tear" and is due to loss of cartilage around the knee joint.  He suggested joining a physio led exercise/arthritis management group. I started two days later, it's six weeks initially,  all free. Some exercises are similar to what we do at our Keep Moving Group but done for 2 minutes and then move onto the next - Oh, so That's what circuits are! 

I also don't know what the weather is going to be like this weekend but hope Sunday is fine as there are yard/garage sales in Son's village and they want to get rid of some unwanted bits.

Hope everyone has a good weekend, I'll be back next week.

3½ lb for £1 and £5 for £2

Just five things from the Saturday boot-sale. First a Gi-normous cauliflower which will last me all week or even longer - that was £1, the Pyrex jug is for Son who asked me to look out for one that still had it's measurement markings on it. That was also £1. Finally there's a 2012 commemorative £5 coin -  I paid £2. It came out of one of the house clearance boxes so maybe hadn't been noticed as being worth £5 or maybe it isn't anyway. 

According to googling it should be accepted at some banks and post-offices. I have a couple of commemorative £2 coins dating back to a royal wedding or something - I'll look them out and see who'll accept them.

The only other thing bought were two female cucumber plants (£2 each) so I have a couple well ahead of my own, which still haven't germinated.

Back Soon

Must Make More This Year

 Just opening my last jar of Sweet and Sour Pickled Cucumber. I've been eking them out since last July as I only made 4 and a bit jars because it was a new to me recipe.

The recipe was Oxburgh's Sweet Cucumber Pickle,  and came from the National Trust book of Jams, Preserves and Edible Gifts and uses cucumbers plus onion, celery, salt, cider vinegar, mustard seeds, soft brown sugar with a little turmeric and ground cloves.

I'm planning to make more this year - even though I'm not a massive fan of vinegary pickles - but  because this has the bit of sweetness, it's not too sharp and it's good to eat with so many things. This year I'll  leave the cucumber and celery in slightly bigger pieces.

I've got 3 cucumber plants in the greenhouse, all about a foot tall so far. I'll be nipping the first flowers off two of the plants so they put on more growth and using the third plant as a 'sacrificial' - letting it grow cucumbers early until it wears itself out. 

This all reminded me that I'd planned to sow a couple more cucumber seeds later than my first sowing in the hope of having some to eat into later autumn. I've left the packet of seeds in the kitchen now to remind me to sow at the end of this month.

Back Soon

Sue

There Was Some Sun

 A much better week weather-wise - at last. The sun shone on more than one day - which is an achievement for this year so far.

I went swimming this week for the first time since October but it was crazy busy. The only other public swimming pool in the North Suffolk/Norfolk border area is in Diss and is closed for a year for complete rebuilding so more people are using Stradbroke and it's not very big!

The internet dropped out for several hours on Tuesday - a problem for several villages around I discovered and  I'm still without a heating boiler. The family business (Ian who does repairs, his wife who does the paperwork and their son who does servicing of boilers) - who usually sort out my boiler have a had a 'few' problems that rather put things into perspective - death of Ian's father, whose empty farmhouse was then ransacked and trashed on the day of the funeral, at the same time as their son needed some help moving house which all happened at the same time as the wife was injured by a horse - when I heard all that my boiler didn't seem a priority! I'm planning on having a new boiler as I'm fed up with all the repairs that have been needed since I moved in, although Ian and son only do new boilers in summer so I might go elsewhere.

It's been easy to keep warm enough in the living room and I bought a cheap oil-filled radiator to have on low in the hallway ready for this weekend when the temps are set to drop. It will keep the rest of the bungalow just a little warmer. I'm thankful that washing machines and dishwashers work from cold water inlet but going back to old fashioned ways of keeping myself clean isn't much fun! So although my electric bill will be bigger, the heating oil will be lasting longer - looking on the positive side - and a new boiler will be more energy efficient and will put off having to have a ground source heat pump for longer.

More garden tidying has been done this week and my seedlings in the propagator (aubergine, 2 types of tomatoes, and peppers)  were big enough to prick out into modules. I sowed 3 cucumber seeds, which I discovered were all I had. If all three come up that will be plenty but one failure and they'll be a shortage, plus I wanted to sow a seed later for late cucumbers so I'll need to buy some more seeds. Also sowed some Climbing French Bean seeds, they are on the windowsill beside the propagator.

 The flowers on one of the young pear trees are about to open so I hope we don't get frosts. The big Magnolia flowers are open but the petals are falling like confetti from the flowering cherry.

Flowers on the table (bookshelf) this week are my own tulips -lovely to have enough to bring in. 

Indoors, much reading has been done including a very poorly written book - 'Murder in Paradise' by Ann Cleeves. 

Published in 1988 -  ten years before starting her Vera and Shetland series - The George and Mollie Palmer-Jones books are a struggle to get through. They are written in an odd way with many short sentences and are quite confusing. All eight have been republished recently.

Much better was this children's book

"Set in Devon in 1941, 'Digging for Victory' tells the story of twelve-year-old Bonnie Roberts who is desperate to play a valuable part in the war effort. For her, tending the family vegetable patch just doesn't cut it; she wants to be a hero like her RAF pilot brother, Ralph. But when the mysterious Mr Fisher is billeted at her Devon farmhouse, and Ralph is reported missing in action, she starts to question what heroism actually involves. And as Bonnie attempts to find out who Mr Fisher really is, she embarks on a life-changing and emotional voyage of discovery. 'Digging for Victory' is an adventure-filled story, with beautiful verse and a very satisfying ending."

That's about it for my week

Hope you have a good weekend, I'll be back Monday. 

Sue

In A Pickle

I only make a few different chutneys now, just my favourites - like the sweet onion 'marmalade' chutney and my red hot or not so red hot tomato/pepper. But after buying and enjoying a jar of cornichons for Christmas last year and finding and growing  the tray of gherkin plants, I now have a jar of pickled gherkins. ........and even though vinegary things weren't my favourite I now also have 4½ jars of  Sweet Cucumber Pickle. 

All because  4 small cucumbers appeared all at once when I already had 1½ in the fridge. So  I found a recipe and had all the ingredients in the house. 

The recipe - Oxburgh's Sweet Cucumber Pickle, came from the National Trust book of Jams, Preserves and Edible Gifts and used the 4 small cucumbers plus onion, celery, salt, cider vinegar, mustard seeds, soft brown sugar with a little turmeric and ground cloves.

There's enough sugar to make it sweet and sour which is good, I've eaten the half jar already and I'm thinking of making more but leaving the cucumber in bigger pieces. 

Another lot of gherkins have appeared on my plants so I need to sort them out today. And now I can see I should have left the first lot I picked to get much bigger.....like this

 Although I found I'd run out of jars and decent lids so needed to stop at the floristry supplies/party stuff/cake decorating/ packaging supplies shop on my way home from Stowmarket....very handy having this shop so close. It's easy to spend Way too much there - I was very good and only bought jars, lids and a jar of the local honey that they sell. The lady who owns this place was just back from her weeks of being a line judge at Wimbledon. She does a talk about it at WI's etc - very interesting to hear how it all works.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

My Quiet Week in Suffolk

The sun has shone and I have books to read and tennis on TV and I did  the Wordle in less than 6 goes all week and in just two tries on Wednesday - a good fluke!

So I'm one of the lucky people with nothing to moan about! 

My Quiet Life in Suffolk this week has involved the Keep Moving Group, swimming and a trip to Morrisons in Ipswich after a very quick stop at  the  Wednesday boot sale (where I bought nothing). At Morrisons I bought a new pair of shorts having abandoned 3 very old pairs last week - all three were really too big and two were chucked due to falling to bits and one pair still OK have gone into the charity shop bag. Too old for shorts I may be but I shall keep wearing them!

Below are the small courgettes that were my 3rd  harvest from the garden, the first small harvest  was a cucumber from the greenhouse and the second was a handful of raspberries from the canes that were here when I came. I cut all the courgettes that were there to encourage more to grow. 

These are all from 2 plants, the third is really slow growing and one I put in a pot in the greenhouse because of being short of space outside is even further behind which is odd. If all 4 plants were to really get going there will be far too many courgettes. But I want to leave one or two to get to marrow size so I can do the Marrow and Apricot Jam (This link is so I know where to find the recipe in July!)

This weekend there's some repair work to do on a piece of trellis that's against the fence which has a yellow climbing rose on it. I hadn't really thought about how the trellis was fixed but, like so many things here, it wasn't really fixed at all. I noticed it had collapsed almost on top of the climbing beans after we had a sudden mini storm on Thursday afternoon and in the rain I went out to try and prop it up - getting nicely scratched in the process! I managed a temporary fix but it needs something more permanent  and I reckon putting a couple of screws into the fence panel and wiring the trellis to the screws should do it - if there is some wire left from what I used for keeping the raspberry canes upright, if not it will be tied with my ever faithful baler twine.

Not sure what else is happening this weekend although I'd like to go to a farmers market so I can get another 'artisan' cheese to try. And I might raid Brother-in-Law's strawberry patch again!

Have a lovely weekend wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

I shall be back Monday

Sue

Another Saturday and a Plea

Thank you to everyone for comments yesterday and apologies for not replying or commenting anywhere either. 

 

What a difference a week makes to life when the cold wind went away from us in the East last weekend and we had a week of sunshine and warmth instead. The world suddenly seems a better place! Although looking at the forecast for next week seems we will be cloudy....what a shame ....perhaps they are wrong.......although we do need rain.

Yesterday, greatly excited, I rushed in for my camera to try for a photo of this.......

A Hummingbird Hawkmoth. Only my second ever sighting. I took eight photos but this was the only one giving any sort of idea of why I was so excited to get a photo.

Summer visitor, breeding regularly in the UK but not so easy to spot and very hard to photograph.

It was a 'bit' warm at the exercise group - goodness knows what it would have been like if our group had been running during last summers extra hot heat wave -  might have been a bit much even for our most energetic 80 year olds! I detoured on my way home to steal a few strawberries from BiL's garden - I did have permission and there were plenty- I'll be back for more soon as he tends to leave them too long.   

This week I started shredding my way through all our old tax self-assessment stuff from the smallholding and campsite. Never had an electric shredder before - what fun it is! Years ago I owned a small manual shredder but mucked it up shredding some foiled paper to make shred for the Christmas hampers. On the smallholding with two fires to light indoors and Col's love of bonfires  it was easy to burn unwanted paperwork. Not possible here in a village.

Instead of galivanting around this week I've been at home more (mainly because son borrowed the car for two days). Had time to make tomato and herb rolls, orange and ginger marmalade, peanut biscuits plus cheese straws to swap for the strawberries from BiL. And to sew badges on Youngest Granddaughters Rainbows zip hoodie (Rainbows are the 4-7 year old version of Brownies and Guides).

 

The tomatoes have been tied up and this is my first cucumber from the greenhouse.

Orange and ginger marmalade made with a tin of the prepared oranges plus some finely chopped pieces of stem ginger-in-syrup and some ground ginger.

And the plea...............

Lots of bloggers have my blog in their reading list on the side of the blog - thank you everyone. But some are still down as "The Cottage at the End of  A  Lane" and it's more than 2 years since I moved. If you still have this, please - when you have a spare minute - could you go into Layout and then the Blog List gadget edit function and take out " The Cottage at the end of a Lane" and then add it back by copying the title again and it should then come up as " My Quiet Life in Suffolk".   Many Thanks. But if you don't have time or can't be bothered or it won't work - no problem.

Hope you all have a good weekend

I shall be back Monday

Sue

Growing Well

 I had a fright one morning in the week before last - looked in the greenhouse and all my babies were looking a bit limp - of course it was a night when they'd not been covered with fleece and the temperature must have dropped lower than the forecast. Thank goodness a while later they were all standing up straight again....phew!

These photos were taken on Saturday - Before the Coronation I worked in the greenhouse for an hour filling up some of the big pots ready for all these to go into later.

There are too many peppers and  too many aubergines here...........

and too many tomatoes too!

and just one cucumber............so far. There are two more babies on the living room windowsill although I only need one because the plan is to sow another cucumber seed in June for a later crop.

Also on the living-room window sill are some teeny squash seedlings - a second sowing after the first three didn't germinate - thought I was going to have to buy new seeds but they seem to be OK.

The raspberry bed is looking more hopeful, considering how sad they looked through the heat of last summer when there was no sign of any new canes appearing. Brother in Law hammered in two metal posts - from his neighbour's old gazebo- early last year and now I've put string along the top and two rows of wires below and fixed a new piece of netting right over the top. The netting cost me over £20 and I wondered aloud if I would get the value back in raspberries but as Lesley (who sold me it ) said -"well without it you won't get any!" - Very True

One more thing looking good is the plant stand. The pots have been standing on the patio all winter after the trellis collapsed but now they are back and the whole thing is tied to the post. There is someone at the car-boot sale who sells succulents so I may be tempted to buy two small ones for the top two shelves and I lost a lovely pink flowered Saxifrage over winter so could replace that.

 You can see the difference in temperatures this spring compared to last if you look at THIS PHOTO of the Plant Stand taken at much the same time last year.

And my 3 Minarette Apple trees are in flower. I know it looks weedy around them but the plants there are mainly Phacelia which are a green manure - self seeded from last year - and after they've flowered for the bees I'll hoe them up and leave them on the soil as a mulch.

Fingers crossed for an edible harvest later.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Food Production in Early July

 Things are coming along OK - although we need rain. I filled up the big water butt from the mains a couple of weeks ago and now it's empty again.

Had the first picking of French Climbing Beans yesterday. I discovered one of the plants absolutely covered with Black Fly - never had that on this sort of beans before. I filled a spray bottle with water and washing up liquid and tried that - hope it works as I don't want to lose the plants so soon and also don't want to use anything nasty.

 

Sweetcorn plants - too close ( a common theme) , behind them is the space where I shall put the Kale and Brussels Sprout plants when they arrive. I've got the wire netting frames BiL made for me and enviromesh to put round and over them.

 

Beetroot - too close with a couple of rows of leeks squashed in behind them and 4 courgette plants - Two too many!

 

Onions in front - which I won't bother with again ( don't know why I grew them this year as I'd decided not to grow them again a few years ago - cheap to buy and too dry is the reason). There are 3 squash plants - with room to trail - just about! and empty canes for the runner beans on the right some have been sown here and some in a small tray and the French Climbing on the left.

In the greenhouse are too many tomato plants, 3 cucumber plants at the end, one aubergine standing on the water butt and one more on the ground. I moved one tomato plant to outside a few weeks ago but could really have moved two more out before they got too big to move.

Four pepper plants, the basil and two more aubergines standing up on the staging

 

Pointy peppers beginning to get pointy

 

Some of the aubergines flowers have set but others just fell off. There will be enough to a big batch of make my favourite aubergine/tomato pasta sauce

Nice to get back to growing food again after my enforced year off last year. 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Last Week In Suffolk

First of all must say a BIG Thank you to everyone for comments on Saturday, lots of discussion, food for thought and ideas. Some I've already tried and didn't like (charity shop) and others aren't practical for where I live. I already belong to 2 WI's and an Over 60s group so that's enough of the "joining stuff" done! Coach trips are a no - as I really don't like traveling by coach or being on holiday with other people (except for family- I can just about cope with them!) I'm never bored at home so will keep thinking..........and blogging.

 

 My tomatoes in the greenhouse are behaving very strangely, shooting up very tall but with hardly any flower trusses. The first flowers are just beginning to set, must start feeding them. I've left side shoots to grow on a couple of plants to see if they'll give me some extra tomatoes and will pinch off the growing tips on them before they get up to roof height.

Cut the first cucumber from the greenhouse.It wasn't fully grown but thought I might as well use it instead of buying one, there are lots more coming and it will be the usual giving-them-away thing, they are always boom or bust!

Looks bigger than it was!

 While tying in the cucumber and tomato plants on Saturday I found myself covered with Ants - tickly! They had set up home, with dozens of eggs under one of the Aubergine pots which I had moved to stand on top of the water butt I have in the greenhouse. I'm afraid that ant powder was deployed as a 'herd' of ants inside a pot can be very destructive.

Hopefully I've bought the last bunch of beetroot (£1.50 at Carboot sale for 8 smallish in the bunch) for a while although mine are far too close together and we've not had much rain to fatten them up so are very tiny but that means they won't take long to cook. I'm loving beetroot again this year after being off them for a while.

 Last Monday I nipped off the first tiny......very tiny....... courgettes so the plants can get more established, didn't waste them, even though chopped up they were hardly more than a tablespoon full, but added them to my curry.

 

My 6 strawberry plants in two tubs are doing surprisingly well  with some every day for 12 days ranging in number from 4 to 14. I had to search the blog to find out when the plants had been put in the tubs and discovered they were runners from some I had previously at Clay Cottage - so this is their 2nd fruiting year.

I stopped by Brother-in-Laws house to see how his strawberries were doing and as usual he'd not told me there were any ready and there were loads getting too ripe. He said he was picking some for his sister and would take off some for me too. He dropped them in on his way through later, so 2lb are in the freezer for jam - even if they are a bit too ripe- and some turned into a couli and popped in the freezer to go with ice-cream.

Quickly read over the two very hot days was the first of the six bargain books of country writing that I picked up at the car-boot sale last Wednesday.

Simon Barnes was for many years a sports correspondent for a big newspaper but now is free-lance writing books about wildlife and traveling to Africa in his work with a conservation trust. This book is about the acres of marshland he owns and cares for near the River Waveney in Norfolk and also about his son Eddie who has Downs Syndrome but who knows nearly as much about the birds and wildlife on their land as Simon does. A lovely book as he writes really well. Recommended.

 

 

Below is a mummy(?) Red Legged Partridge and one baby just by my front door on Saturday morning. They had a nest directly opposite me in the long grassy bit of the churchyard......much noise and alarm calls earlier in the year gave their position away! The sad thing to tell you is that earlier last week she had brought 11 babies across the road to see what they could find on the shingle of my driveway. Why she found it necessary to bring them over the road is a mystery when there is a couple of acres of grassland behind the churchyard. But after less than a week just the one left.  Cats or birds of prey have taken the rest I guess.

 Back Tomorrow

Sue

 

Strange Times End of Week 12 Saturday Round Up

A funny ol' week in Suffolk. First the weather going from very hot to very chilly and extra windy in just 2 days and then on and off all week I've felt not quite well, sore throat and earache and tired - no cough or fever and I could still taste things so not  THE virus.

Anyway, enough of the moaning................... as the 'whatever it is' is going I'm sure.

So what's been happening here this week while I've been drinking loads of water, popping paracetamol and lazing around reading........................................

On the local  facebook page I read that work has started clearing the site in Stowmarket where they are going to build a new Aldi. I got quite used to Aldi during the year in Ipswich so it will be handy having one in Stow. It's quite ironic really that there actually was an Aldi in Stowmarket years and years ago when nobody really knew what they were. Everyone at that time was so used to shopping at Asda - which is right in the town centre, that the Aldi didn't survive.

It was good to see live  snooker on TV this week, not because I love snooker but because there are so many old repeated programmes on at the moment  it made a change to see something new and live. They've found a way to play safely - no audience and lots of testing and cleaning but it worked OK. Plus news that cricket will be on free TV for the first for over 20 years, wish Col was still around he would have been so pleased.
Sad to see the final programme in Grayson Perry's Art Club series. I really enjoyed seeing him and his wife Phillipa working at home. 
Springwatch programmes have been on for a couple of weeks and they've been interesting, good to see what's happening in the countryside in other parts of the country when all we have here are arable fields.  Although I got quite excited one day this week when I heard a Cuckoo - first time this year and just on the one day and nearly at the end of its visiting time too and I also spotted Swifts, plenty of House Martins around but that was my first sight of Swifts this year - still not seen Swallows.

My experiment of sowing runner beans quite late has begun. I soaked some and then put in trays in the shade on the floor of the greenhouse on 1st June to get them going (must make a note of how long they take to grow and when I plant them out) and plan to do the same again on the 1st July. I hope the first lot will start to produce beans about 4 - 6 weeks after the climbing French beans and the second sowing will carry on producing to the end of October..........that's the theory.
One of my big cucumber plants has keeled over and almost died this week - not the sacrificial cucumber, that's still hanging on, but one of the three in big pots, it's clinging onto life but not growing, not sure why.
A disappointing email from Thompson and Morgan - "sorry we can't supply your melon plant after all" - what a shame - it was going to be a fun extra to try, but they'll refund me and if I remember I'll try again next year.
Two weeks ago I promised to keep a running total of food from the garden, back then it looked like this

•  6 small lettuces (very small - as in about 8 leaves each!)
• 2 cucumbers
• a few asparagus spears
• lots of rhubarb

Now it's

• 9 small lettuces (I now have a gap because the next sowing took ages to get going)
• 3 Cucumbers - and 2 more given away to the neighbours
• a few asparagus spears
• lots of rhubarb
• 4 strawberries. The lack of rain (9 or 10 weeks without?) and not being able to water them means the plants in my main strawberry bed have all died so all I have is 6 new plants in 2 big pots on the patio which are close enough to water.  They were scrumptious.
  

Hope my BiL can supply some for me from his garden so I can make some jam.............. Commercial growers have new plants every year and you can see why as new plants always produce lovely big strawberries, whereas fruit from older plants tends to be smaller and more "seedy".

 Thursday night, one night away from the June full moon - The Rose Moon - and I watched it rise from the living room, too cold and windy to venture outside

This week I'm grateful for
A warm house when the weather turned cold
Lots of hobbies
The first rain for 2 months on Friday

Have a good weekend - the weather forecast is horrible - a stay at home weekend - like all the others in the last 12 weeks!

Back Monday
Sue

The Sacrificial Cucumber Plant

We put enough wires in the greenhouse for tying up 2 cucumber   plants..........  so I squeeze in 3....of course. To get 3 plants I sow 4 seeds just in case and in the last couple of years have had all four germinating.

 3 plants are put into big pots and are staked until they reach the wires and most of the teeny cucumbers and some of the side shoots are pinched off  to start with so they put all their energy into growing a strong main stem.

 But not wanting to abandon one plant I put it in a smaller pot and let it grow without pinching off any of the baby cucumbers.

That's how I get cucumbers in mid May.

This plant will outgrow its small pot and run out of energy within a few weeks and then it will be emptied into the compost bin, the other three will get fed and watered and should last several months.


Back Tomorrow
Sue

From Little Seeds..............

...................Good Things Grow

Coming along nicely in the greenhouse...............

Four of the Cascade tomato plants are in the baskets on the garage wall and there was one left over so instead of chucking it out it's standing in the greenhouse and is producing some teeny weeny tomatoes.......... as are the ones outside.

These are Big Mama Plum tomatoes.

I really do have too many tomato plants in the greenhouse. Each plant is much too tall - searching for the light with the trusses of tomatoes very sparse.  There are a few Sun Grape mini plum tomatoes but the 2 Ildi Yellow plums plants are way behind. Must remember FEWER PLANTS NEXT YEAR!


I have aubergines and these grow almost as you watch them. I'm looking forward to making the aubergine and tomato pasta sauce to put in the freezer.

 Lots more aubergine flowers, hopefully will produce lots more aubergines

 And 'pointy' sweet peppers

 Cucumbers lurking among the lush greenery, and I've already eaten 3 cucumbers and given 2 away.
 

I let plant number 4, that I didn't really have room for, produce two cucumbers -while I took the teeny ones off the other 3 plants. Then plant 4 went in the compost heap and the other 3 are now climbing halfway round the greenhouse.


And from outside I have the first slightly manky (word origin - British, meaning - slightly inferior!) raspberries - just one cane is obviously a yellow fruited raspberry. 

And that's why I love growing things to eat.


Back Tomorrow
Sue

Squeezing things into the Greenhouse

All the pots I could find have now been planted up and the greenhouse is full. Not only have I got tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and aubergines in their big pots there are also lots of things waiting to go outside as soon as I have time.

Above are 5 'pointy' Pepper plants plus five Aubergines in big pots. French Climbing beans to go out as are the Sweetcorn - baby ones for stir-fries. One more big pot ready for another yellow tomato. 2 trays sown with mangetout peas. 2 pots sown with nasturtiums - no sign of them yet. Some small tomato plants to go in the hanging baskets and at the end  are 2 cucumbers. Also some squash seedlings just emerging.

Down the other side are 9 various tomato plants with French Marigolds also in the pots to encourage insects in for pollination and another cucumber in the big pot at the end.

It's been lovely and warm in the greenhouse compared to outside where there has still been some chilly wind. I love having open fields all round but it doesn't do much for blocking the winds.

Now have to hope for  a good harvest. Fingers crossed.

Back Tomorrow
Sue

The Seed Catalogues

They've all arrived, so I went through the seed tin and wrote a list (always a list!). I don't need much but do like to pick the varieties.

D.T Brown are local to Suffolk, have some good choices and cheapest postage. I need beetroot,  tomato, cucumber, sweet red  'pointy' peppers, leeks, curly parsley, nasturtium and basil. Then maybe sweetcorn...... and here's a weird thing........... I could have sworn that sometime last year  I bought a packet of mini sweetcorn to grow to use for stir frying BUT the packet in the seed  tin are ordinary corn cobs. I even mentioned finding them at a car boot sale in a blog post. So why aren't they what I thought they were? ............No idea.

I'm ordering a big plum type Tomato that I've not tried before called Big Mama , a mini plum that I grew last year - Sungrape. and for something completely different a yellow grape variety called Ildi . I've just 2 cucumber Euphya seeds from last year so have ordered some Louisa, another variety I've grown in the past. Sweet Peppers will be Bullhorn Mix. I have a few very old leek seeds so I'll get some new and a new large pack of beetroot to add to the pack of Bolthardy left from last year. The rest  - parsley, nasturtium and basil I can get from anywhere and probably cheaper - as long as I remember to write them on a shopping list.  D.T Browns don't have a mini sweetcorn so I'll look elsewhere for them, my Essex friends love to grow lots of corncobs so I could pass the packet onto them because I don't want to grow the big cobs.

Apart from the above the other things I'm planning to grow are the same as last year...... French Climbing beans and Runner Beans - both from seed I saved from what I grew. Aubergines, chard, Mange tout peas, lettuces and courgettes.I also have  4 butternut squash seeds to hopefully grow better than last year when only 1 plant survived and produced just 1 squash!

Back Soon
Sue