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| Sweet Pea, Wisley Magic runner beans. Tumbling Tom and Losetto tomatoes (both types look the same) |
Picked some Sweet Peas too to try to make the house smell fragrant. A kind (sarcasm here) neighbour had a mighty, billowing bonfire this morning that reached to the sky. Apart from covering all my newly hung out washing with soot, and all my garden furniture with soot, and soot over everything else too, the smoke has impregnated everything in the house with the stink of it which I cannot seem to get rid of. I thanked him in a roundabout fashion. Not.
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| Wisley Magic runner beans, straight, stringless, and healthy |
Although the two tomato plants (Tumbling Tom and Losetto F1) are producing red fruit, I'm hardly getting a glut of them due to the rather temperamental weather we are having. Tomatoes like sunshine and heat (so do I). Even so, I get a few ripening every day, with plenty more on the way, and I am eating them like candy. They are cherry-size, or just a little larger, and they pop in my mouth when I bite them and taste nothing like the bland ones you buy in supermarkets no matter how what the stores say in their adverts. They are sugar sweet. In my earlier post on June 11 (see previous link), I mentioned that I didn't know which would be best. Well, Tumbling Tom and Losetto are equal in my opinion and I would grow them both again. Losetto is said to be blight resistant but, touch wood, I've never had a problem with blight on Tumbling Tom tomato plants either. They have slightly different growing habits. Tumbling Tom is more bushy and compact, and Losetto is bushy but stretches out a bit although it hasn't got out of hand.
The ever fruiting strawberries have been a bit abysmal but, again, it is down to the weather. Strawberries don't like inclement weather any more than I do. Even so, I've been getting a few decent sized and healthy red strawberries, so that's good. I still find it fascinating that the strawberry is the only fruit to have its seeds on the outside.
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| Ever fruiting strawberry |
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| Cut and Come Again lettuce leaves |
This year I planted a sprinkling of 'Cut and Come Again' lettuce which are growing in a large black plastic pot. They are really healthy and I just keep picking leaves and eating them straight away. Things in my garden are lucky if they get as far as a plate although I've drawn the line at eating things like runner beans raw. But you cannot possibly have more vitamins in a food crop than eating it raw, freshly picked, can you?
I'm still waiting for my Soleil F1 yellow courgettes to grow but the flowers are there and the fruit will follow just like they did the last time I grew them. I hope.
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| Soleil F1 courgette, 2011 |