We’re growing four varieties of tomatoes: ‘mortgage lifter’ beef tomatoes, ‘Japanese black trifele’ and ‘yellow perfection’ and ‘gardener’s delight’ (red cherry tomatoes) – and all are ripening and yielding lots of fruit. So far we’ve made pasta sauces (including a roasted tomato and garlic sauce – pictured above before going into the oven). Canning and freezing will need to start soon. We’ve also got a lot of cucumbers (tamra and lemon crystal) to eat and pickle.
We’ve got lots of celery ready all at once and have already chopped and frozen a few bags of fresh celery. We’ll have to blanch and freeze a few batches as well to keep that bit longer. These will be used in soups and stews throughout the winter months.
We’ve had mixed success with growing onions from seed and planting in small groups of four to six onions. They needed to come out of the ground in recent weeks, but many are quite small so we’re using them up first. The courgette glut continues (we’ve three plants). We blanched and froze a few bags of them last month, and will probably have a few more to do in the coming weeks.
Coming soon…
Our lipstick peppers are doing well and will hopefully soon start to ripen. It would be great to have them in time to batch cook some ratatouille with tomatoes and courgette for freezing. Our green nutmeg melon plant is doing very well with lots of fruit now showing, we’ll freeze a good portion of this for use in smoothies. (We may need a larger freezer!)Our late spring-planted carrots, salsify and parsnips still have a good bit of growing to do, but will hopefully be plentiful in the autumn time. We’ve just planted some last ditch carrot and beetroot seed, and have some beetroot seedlings to plant out too, as well as spinach. Next we’ll start more spinach and some parsley and winter lettuce to plant in the tunnel so we can hopefully have a supply through the colder months.
Ballyer Backyard 