Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Indian Summer.

The last few days have been warm and sunny, a mini Indian Summer, the warmer weather has brought a few surprises,
at last our Passion Flower has flowered,
and the Chinese lanterns are turning red,
also the Lily's which seemed to be at a stand still for months have at last flowered,
the perfume is beautiful. We had wondered what we should do about the bulbs once they had stopped flowering, but a friend put us right, just leave them. He has a garden full of lily's and does nothing to them, so we will do the same, nothing.
The Sweet peas show no sign of slowing down even though they had a very slow start, there is a big bunch to be picked every other day. This year we followed the advice of Monty Don and pinched out the growing tips when they were about six inches high, this has resulted in very long stems, the longest we have ever grown.
The tomatoes are abundant, we did grow one plant of an old variety, 'Money Maker', these are ripening now but the flavour compared to 'Sun Gold' is very disappointing, so we will stick the 'Sun Gold' unless we can get seed of a variety called 'Butchers Blood' which comes highly recommended by another blogger.
The late planting of French Beans seems to have worked as they are now in bloom so we should be picking them in a few weeks, the peas are also looking good but not in bloom yet.
We had forgotten to plant any turnips this year so we did a late sowing, these have germinated well
as has the second sowing of perpetual spinach and true spinach,  if it gets a little chilly we can pop the cloche over them.
The autumn cauliflowers are now curding up, the first one should be ready to eat by the weekend. All the potatoes have now been lifted and stored around 150lb in total, I don't think we will run out before next years first earlies are ready.
The new bed is now finished and the new plants installed, some of the herbaceous plants have also been split and re-homed, but as everything has been so slow this year there are still a lot that require splitting, the  Rudbeckia's  and Echinacea   are just blooming now, at least a month later than they should be.
There have been a few disappointments this year, the asparagus which was doing well got set back with late frosts so we only had three feeds from it, the runner beans are so late so far just the one meal and the peach tree which showed such promise in early spring with lots of bloom has failed to produce one single fruit, maybe we didn't water it enough now it's in the tunnel. Note to self, must water the peach tree regularly next year. Apart from that everything has done well.
With decent weather the last week has been spent in the garden, we have not had time for a day out other than our weekly trip to the farmers market.
This week we treated ourselves to a rib of beef joint from the new Organic butchers, Dexter beef hung for twenty eight days tastes as beef used to taste, served with Yorkshire puddings and veg straight from the garden it was superb, we don't often buy meat as we produce most of our own, but every so often it is nice to have something other than poultry or pork.

14 comments:

  1. Your flowers look amazing, I have never seen a Passion Flower before, We have bought 2 lilies for our new garden, white and orange, I love them, lovely fragrance, I love sweet peas as well.

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    1. I love my flower gardens, it has taken two years for the passion flower to bloom, it's a plant that I have always loved. I was very surprised by our friends advice to leave the lily's out for the winter, but we will do what he has said.

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  2. Interesting about the sweet peas and the long stems. I think you are living the dream Anne.

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    1. I was surprised about pinching out the tops of the sweet peas but it has certainly worked.

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  3. Everything looks wonderful! Including those yorkshire puds.

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    1. Thanks Coco, we love our Yorkshire puds, we even used to make them in Spain when we had beef.

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  4. There's always some failures in the garden every year but you don't seem to have done bad at all this year, many more successes. Your passion flower is beautiful and I love Chinese lanterns but they never do very well in my garden, not sure why. Your roast dinner is making my mouth water, yum yum. I don't think you can beat roast beef and Yorkshire puds.

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    1. I agree with you Jo, roast beef and yorkies, nothing can beat it. We had the Chinese lanterns in a pot outside all last year they flowered but failed to make maturity, so this year we popped them into the tunnel once they started blooming, it seems to have worked. maybe try them in your greenhouse Jo? It has taken the passion flower two years to bloom for us and that is in the sunroom.

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  5. Ahhh the Dexters. We are so so torn!

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    1. Just saying we are torn between getting Dexters and not. We'd need to buy/rent another field which might be a struggle but we look longingly at Dexter cattle and wonder whether one day we might own one or two. A couple with whom we are friends have just acquired some in Kent with tiny calves at foot. If we ever do cattle, the Dexters will definitely be our choice.

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  6. Ah the passion flower is impressive and the lillies are very pretty! I am sat at the library computer and the beef and puddings have got my tummy rumbling! x

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  7. We had a huge passion flower in Galicia, it used to bloom all summer, the lilies are beautifully perfumed. Next time you come I promise you roast beef and Yorkshire puddings!

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