Strawberries were almost on the way out...

You'll have to wait for the Malta updates yet I'm afraid, as I still haven't uploaded my pics.  Instead I bring you my overwintered strawberries.

Before I went to Malta in mid-March I saw this!  My first strawberry was appearing after all my strawberries had been overwintering in the greenhouse.  I had several flower heads appear in December but they were too cold to set fruit.

As you may notice looking closely at the flower head stalk above the fruiting one, my poor strawberries have been overrun by aphids.  When I returned from Malta the green foliage was mostly brown on all of my plants and this strawberry was nowhere to be seen.

Excuse the weeds between the slabs please - not got to weeding this part of the garden yet

I've had the strawberries sitting outside for about a week now, trying to get the greenfly away from the rest of my greenhouse.  They've been looking steadily worse each day and I decided yesterday it was time to let go.  So as I went to throw them out I of course saw new growth appearing in all of them!

I decided to prune down all the dead and dying foliage to allow the new growth a chance.  Pretty much all of them look like this now.  I left some old stalks as I didn't want to risk cutting too close to the new growth.

I left flowers on some, as most still had flowers, but I pruned them off the ones that didn't look like they were going to survive anyway.

I also treated them with a nice organic pest deterrent.   I've heard garlic and chilli combined are supposed to ward of particularly aphids, but apparently most insects.  Be careful not to go too far with the garlic, because it can put off beneficial insects too.  Hubby had just so happened to have made a fresh batch of pureed garlic, ginger and chilli paste for culinary use.  I used just about 1/3 of a teaspoon in a spray bottle, topped it up with water and shook it up.  I sprayed all of the strawberries and poured some directly over the worst aphid infested plants.  They are still alive today (the plants that is) but I've noticed there are certainly less greenfly hanging on.  Hopefully if I continue to treat them this way they'll leave my poor strawberries alone.  I see now why strawberries are considered the most pesticide-exposed fruits in the supermarket.

Anyone else find strawberries to be an aphid-magnet?  Are some varieties more susceptible than others?  Where are all the ladybirds this year?

Long overdue garden update!

I know I've been away from here for a long time!  Life has just been busy.  Since making the decision to leave my job in January, I had to wait out my gruelling 7.5 week notice period, after which I went directly on holiday to Malta!  It was nothing short of phenomenal and I have several posts to do about the Maltese Islands and their flora.

Reclaiming my social life!  I don't officially endorse Southern Comfort or any of their products, but I personally encourage drinking them! Haha

Since then I've been busy working away on commissions and getting my business started, as well as finally having a social life (Which I literally felt like I haven't had for several years).  If anyone is interested in following my business ventures please keep an eye on thequestisover.co.uk for any developments as they happen.  It's slow going right now, but I've had some bridal commissions and lots of paperwork to do around it before I get fully into the swing of things.

I've taken away the cosmetics sections of the blog, which although I do make don't really warrant their own section as I don't post much here about them.  So I have added new sections on Gardening on a Budget, Indoor & Container Gardening and my Lessons Learned series.  I've also changed the header but not sure if I like it yet!

Yes, I like my Nesquick chocolate milkshake...hey at least I recycle!

 Got all my plants in full swing now, some doing better than others, but definitely a large variety going on!

I apologise for the quality of some photos - I took them all on my phone because it was simpler/both my memory cards are still full of Malta photos I've not backed up yet

Most days are a bit soggy but warm enough, with the greenhouse sitting at roughly 20-25 degrees centigrade most days.  On Friday this reached 32 degrees!!

My star plants right now are absolutely my broad beans, which I planted 19th February and they proceeded to rocket skyward ever since.  They are all absolutely laiden with flowers now!  I am growing Sutton Dwarf, Aquadulce and Masterpiece Green Longpod varieties (5 of each).

So far I've managed to deter the slimy beasts (slugs & snails) from my broad beans (last year they did nothing short of rape them of all their worth - not a leaf, flowerhead or pod was left).  However, this year they look much, much healthier and larger plants, I think particularly the new varieties are really impressing me (previously I've only grown Sutton).  I keep all of them on the metal shelf provided by my Dad when he was cleaning out his office.  Since I've been using it I've not had a single slimer on that side of the greenhouse.  So I'm thinking about either replacing the wooden shelf that came with the greenhouse (and is attached to the greenhouse itself) or coating the entire thing in copper tape.

The slug was actually the second pest to get its teeth into this leaf - the top layer was eaten neatly off by some other creature, exposing all the veins first, and then the slug just came in and had a party with the rest

Unfortunately the non-metal side of the greenhouse has suffered a fair amount of slimy creature damage.  I am unkeen to use slug pellets, being a vegetarian/trying to be an organic gardener, but I am not too concerned as most of the cucurbita are actually pretty advanced, and it only seems to be, in most cases, their first set of leaves being eaten, which would have probably fallen off soon anyway.

A few plants have suffered though - like the above four Aubergines.  Its hard to tell from the rubbish photo but it does actually look like the growing tips are intact on at least 2 of the plants, so provided there's no further attacks in this particular pot they might make it.  I do however have zero cucumbers left, though I know one seed has germinated but is still to surface so it might be my only one!

My Inca Berry (aka Cape Gooseberry) plants may look from afar like they are suffering, but in fact they are thriving!  Throughout winter they seemed to have no clue that winter had arrived (much like my goji berry plant) and as soon as it hit March their leaves started to turn more dark and purpley then flowers popped up everywhere.  They also have a lot of new growth.  I haven't pruned any old leaves off yet or any new growth, because though I want all their energy to focus on the fruits, I am concerned that pruning may encourage more new leaf growth instead.  Everything I've looked up on them basically says to leave them alone once they flower, and cut down on watering them/bothering them in any way.  I do have three (well technically 4 since the shortest one appears to be twin plants) so I might experiment with pruning if I get too impatient waiting on my fruits!

Inca Berry flowers and new leaves appearing

Inca Berries have papery pods like Tomatillos which host the berry and protect them as they grow.  These turn a light brown shade and then fall off when ripe.

I've not actually had the pleasure of tasting these yet so I am pretty excited to be getting a harvest soon.  Even the most stunted plant (about 1ft tall, while my tallest is approx 3.5ft) is laiden with pods and new flowers are still appearing.  They appear to be self pollinating too, which is great.

Cucamelons are getting going now!  I've added them to this hanging basket so the mini melon plants can trail over the edges.  Very hopeful and excited for the look of this later this year.  I intend to earth up a bit as they grow.

It may be quite hard to see these plants, since most of them are purple!  These are all different types of chilli.  The ones with the green true leaves starting to come through are calico and black pearl (at the moment they appear to grow much the same).  The fully purple leaved ones are all Purple Flash.  They all appear to be struggling with actually getting growing very fast!

Black Pearl chilli plant

This for example, is an ordinary disposable cup that I'm using as a pot, which cannot be more than an absolute maximum of 5cm diameter.  The roots are tiny and all my chillis still have far to go in these vessels before being potted on.  I had been waiting for them all to get true leaves but decided to pot them into these early from the propagator because they were so slow growing!  I don't know if the propagator they were in has restricted their roots or if its because they're all purple that they're absorbing less chlorophyll?  However my green-leaved chillis are all just mildly larger.  

I planted these 19th February - so I feel they should be much, much larger.  Mark suggested feeding them with Baby Bio plant food, which I will give a try.  It may not seem much because they are still SO tiny, but they have been growing since potting on.  Nearly all of them have started growing their true leaves now, and I planted all of them with the soil right up to the base of the leaves so they've been pushing up a little.  It is quite baffling considering everything else in the greenhouse is doing pretty exceptional (aside from those poor devoured cucumbers, though they were growing well until that instance) so I'll just have to do that awful waiting/patience thing.  

I may try to plant some new seeds of the same chilli types and see what happens - perhaps starting them so early and having a long germination period rather than a shorter one in hotter weather wasn't the best approach?  I'll keep you updated on those.  I am so excited for them to grow up because their foliage is absolutely stunning, not to mention their ornamental (but thankfully also edible) chillis.

French, Borlotti and Soya Beans have all popped up now, and getting some gorgeous, fresh looking leaves on them.

I have 4 varieties of Okra this year (fast become my favourite vegetable to eat, though peas are still at the top for now).  I'm impressed with their growth thus far considering they are more partial to hotter climates.  I will be re-potting them soon once all the seeds have fully emerged.

Green Giant Tomato

The tomatoes are thriving!  I've planted them all so that I can earth up once they are a little larger, to extend the use of their pots.  I'm really pleased with their progress so far, and soon I'll be able to start making decisions on how I intend to prune and shape their growth.  I like these slightly purple leaves of the Green Giant.  

Potatoes are doing great!!  I have four varieties, and need to earth them all up now.  Pleased with how much they seem to be thriving, considering my first time growing them was last year and it was really just a last ditch attempt to not throw away a potato which was chitting on its own in the cupboard haha.  (I did get some absolutely delicious potatoes from it but they were tiny).  This year I bought proper seed potatoes and proper potato grow bags, so looking forward to hopefully a larger crop this year. 

More soon on the variety details of my potatoes, okra, tomatoes etc.  Just wanted to give a larger update overall, but I will soon be building myself a small (not walk in) fruit cage because both my gooseberry and blackcurrant are laiden with these:

Goosebery flowers - Can you see the little green gooseberries above them?

This green gooseberry in particular is thriving with a ton of new growth and flowers appearing.  I'm very excited because I got all my fruit bushes last year and they grew and went dormant, and this is the first year they are flowering/fruiting!!

Winter cometh

Just wanted to share the beauty of my blueberry even as winter sets in.  The frost covering the soil is simply gorgeous.

Though the bucket for catching rain water has frozen solid! (I am planning to get a water butt next year).  The half brick is to weigh it down because its very windy in my area, and its full of leaves.

And finally my fruit bushes all together (nearly,  there's a few elsewhere due to space).  I am hoping to transplant some to the ground maybe next Autumn when they're a bit bigger and I have had time to clear and prepare the area.

Final tomato harvest and some weirdos!

Apologies for my recent disappearance!! Some of you may know I had a job interview, which was originally scheduled for last week but was postponed to today instead.  Thankfully on my part, because due to my boss being on holiday, I've been managing the entire time he's been away, and as we're open 7 days I have worked 10 days straight, followed by a day off to act upon bridesmaid duties and sew my suit for my interview like a mad thing.  Then back to work and FINALLY off again today to have my interview and its the first time I've been able to get into the garden in about two weeks, particularly in DAYLIGHT, which seems to have almost left Scotland lately altogether. (The interview went very well for anyone wondering, and I'll let you know how I got on when I hear back next week).

So today I only really had time to check on everything and quickly water it.  It was like a mad chilli jungle, with them having flowered yet again and producing fruits all over the place.  A bit odd, not sure if this is like a last gasp defence mechanism or not.  I still have a bazillion of these plants though, so I will definitely be overwintering at least a few of them.  

I decided it was time to call it a day with the tomatoes, and brought them all inside and cut off the remaining fruits, which I will ripen in the boiler cupboard.  Although I've never read about it before, I'm going to experiment with overwintering tomatoes.  It sounds totally mad, since I've never heard of anyone even trying this before, but I figured why not give it a go since I'm overwintering a bunch of other things anyway.  So I pruned them all down to the point where they can still grow in the side shoots (that I would normally pinch out).  I plan to put them into very deep pots and allow the lower stems to build a really strong root system and I'm hoping this might mean the plants survive long enough to start re-sprouting later.  We will see!  I will likely keep them indoors if not in the greenhouse during this.  I have planted some side shoots which I let grow then cut off a few months ago and they are all doing extremely well in the greenhouse, they are lovely and green, tall, though height growth has slowed as its gotten colder, and they are clearly hydrated and holding water very well.  So I will leave them in the greenhouse and monitor them to see if they actually make it through to spring, when I hope they will start growing up again.  

So now for my harvest!  There's a mix of Black Russian, which is the one with ridges and is dark green on top.  They ripen to red with almost black on top.  There's also moneymaker and roma and a couple chillis in there too.

Roma performed very...non existantly this year.  All my tomato plants produced, and I know at least two of them were Roma as far as I know (there should have been 2 of each of the three varieties)  but the cross pollination of them saw most of the plants producing Black Russians and Moneymakers on the same plant on multiple plants!  I have only seen one distinctly Roma-esque tomato.  So its clearly the weaker of the three.  I would say that Black Russian is the more dominant one, but they take the longest to ripen.

And who is this little weirdo?

I call him Triplette, (because you know, I name and genderise all my tomatoes...), and its literally a single tomato, split into three at the bottom, but attached at the top.  The "scars" on the fruit are from the flower petals which were stuck.  I didn't see this one when it first grew until it got quite big, so I didn't pull the flower off, and as a result the tomato grew through the middle and around the outer edges as the flower was pushed away from the stalk, resulting in this.

It has this brown section on the underside of both edges of one segment of the tomato.  It seems to be the equivalent of a tomato ectopic pregnancy.  The seeds have been produced on the outside of this section, instead of inside.  They are very small and the surface appears more similarly to a strawberry.  It will be interesting to let this one ripen then cut it open.  I'm not sure it will be salvageable as edible, but it will certainly be interesting!

Now that I trimmed it off, I'm not sure if this IS a chilli, or rather a sweet pepper.  I'm sure I'll find out.  I forgot to label well, ANY of my chillis or peppers (fool that I am with having so many) but I may well have got some cross pollination from them too.

I have lots of posts cued up to go, so now that my interview is over, and even if I get the job I wouldn't start until January, so I'm hoping I can get enough time actually out of work to get some more daylight photos and updates on garden renovations and who/what is being overwintered!  (I saw who, cos these plants are basically my children) :P  It's nice to be back!

Cold & Wet

Apologies for the extreme lack of updates!!  There are several reasons for this, one being that when I'm at work its always a 10-hour shift, plus commute, and I've had to pick up some extra shifts because the boss has been ill and I'm basically management when he's not there.  Another has been that its super soaking and cold right now, and really too wet to do anything in the garden right now.  But now that our first frost has finally happened (over a month later than predicted on the weather website I checked it out on in August) the rain has gone off but its extremely windy!

I fleeced a few of my plants, my almond, who went into autumn mode before any other plants, my goji berry (who still thinks its the height of summer and is producing new branches and is filled with greener than green leaves) and my blackcurrant, which is just realising autumn has appeared.  I noticed some white fungal symptoms on some of the leaves of my goji berry, and trimmed some of the branches which seemed worst effected, but I'll have to look into what it might be to stop it getting any worse.  So far the fleecing has proved to be problematic and helps the plants catch the wind and causes their pots to fall over, but thankfully the goji berry has a massive heavy pot, otherwise I would be quite worried, because its a huge plant!  Should I be fleecing my other fruit bushes?  They seem quite acclimatised, particularly the blueberry who is a gorgeous shades of red and orange.  I wouldn't have bothered with my almond, since its already pretty barky, but its still very small and having never grown one before I thought it best to be safe.

My tomatoes are STILL producing new tomatoes, but I picked the massive giants I was waiting on to ripen indoors, but they're being pretty stubborn! Much of my greenhouse doesn't seem to know its nearing winter...

Check out these triplets:

My strawberries also seem to think its perfect fruiting time...though I've heard that sometimes these are planted for a November harvest before, so maybe its normal?  They were planted late, I was hoping to try to overwinter some.

Got my new fruit bush canes planted, potted and out.  (Loganberry, Raspberry, Gooseberry, Blackberry and a new variety of Blueberry) I still have a lot of weeding to make new beds to do, and planning the beds as well as finally getting my garlic and onions out.  So hopefully lots of updates to come now its drier!

Egg Shells

So for a while now I've been using this excellent recipe for fertilizer using banana skins and egg shells.  But I keep finding that its a nightmare to get the eggshells out of the smoothie maker afterwards, because it does such a good job of pulverising them!  So I decided instead to pre-crush my egg shells, which I can then add to my now adapted recipe of a banana skin and nettle cocktail.  This way I can just add them after in the jug and mix in, saving me bags of time cleaning that damn thing.

So it also means I have crushed shells available to scatter on top of stuff (to deter those pesky slugs!) and to mix into soil.

Why didn't I think to do this before!?