Ugly Tomatoes.

For the last few years we have always planted Sun Gold tomatoes, in my view one of the prettiest tomato and one of the best flavoured ones, however, somehow things went wrong this year. A friend gave us two trays of tomato seedlings. She had far too many for her and two trays were too much for us, so only one tray was planted, we also failed to ask her what they were. None of our beloved Sun Golds were planted. Well, these unknown tomatoes appear to be beef tomatoes, I could be wrong on this as it's not a type I would plant, it's good to look a gift horse in the mouth.

not only do they take the prize for being the ugliest thing we have grown I also don't like the flavour, not much tomato, rather acid and when fried they go to a creamy consistency. We had plans for lots of sun dried tomatoes this year now that we have the dehydrator, I'm just not too sure how these ugly toms will work out. I guess time will tell. Moral to this tale, sometimes
The other mistake this year is our French Beans which have turned out to be Runner Beans, we ordered seeds form a new company this year, and the beans certainly looked like French Beans, they were duly pre-germinated before planting into the tunnel, I was a little surprised how long they were taking to form beans as French Beans are quite quick, but they are most definitely Runner Beans, so we have two lots of Runners, one in the tunnel and the ones in the garden, we have never enjoyed frozen Runners and our experiment with salting them a few years ago was not that successful, and most of our friends all grow their own, so we will have a lot of wasted beans this year unless we can come up with an idea how to use them. I wonder if they would de-hydrate and still be worth eating.

What a beauty.

After having written in my last post about the lack of butterflies we arrived home the next day to a mist of newly hatched butterflies, the Buddleia was full of them,

Peacocks,

Tortoiseshell's

and Red Admirals, they have remained around us all this week, with new ones appearing daily, including Speckled Wood, unfortunately they are too fast to 'photograph. It's reassuring to see them.

All the peaches have now been picked, the older tree gave us fifty eight half pounders, we ate what we could and the rest have been bottled ready for winter deserts. The store cupboard is now full, so it's just as well the fruit season is over apart from the apples and they will be de-hydrated.

Looking towards Strandhill, lots of interesting Orchids in those dunes.

We once again had a trip to the Sligo coast, via the Ox mountains, but this time we took a different route across the mountains

and discovered banks of Harebells,

we know we had seen them in these mountains once before but could not remember where,

I never get bored seeing the coast, there's always so much movement and interesting things to see,

this time I spotted a Cormorant drying it's wings, it was only after I had taken the photo that I realised that there was also a Heron doing the same thing, unfortunately it's not a clear picture of the Heron.

More waves.

We also found a beautiful waterfall, but not on the coast , this one is in Killukin, in Co. Leitrim. I guess I am  attracted to any water source being an Aquarian. I always find it so calming, even if they are big waves.

The Chinese lantern plant which was gift from a friend has done wonderfully this year, it is now well established.
All the new plants around the pond have taken,

Zara our Persian cat loves to walk around the plants smelling the Thymes and Dianthus, she's not interested in the other plants.
 Now all that remains to be done to the rockery is planting spring bulbs, I can't believe that we are already coming up to bulb planting time again, where has this year gone? 

Summer abundance.

The soft fruit harvest has been very good this year despite the Gooseberry sawfly  stripping the gooseberries and redcurrant bushes leafs,

the gooseberries gave us around twenty kg of lovely fruit, we have sold around half ,

Last of the Gooseberries.

the rest has been made into jam or just frozen for winter deserts. The Red currants have given us around six kg so far with around another four remaining to be picked, most of these have been sold to a friend who will eat red currant jelly with everything, even with a salad. We don't need any of the fruit this year as we still have several pots of jelly left from last year.

The raspberries keep on coming.

We have lost count on the raspberries, there has been two big pickings one of six kg and the other one weighed in at seven kg, plus what we have picked just to eat for desert, this is one fruit that we keep mainly for ourselves, we have sold a couple of kgs' but it is just about our most favourite fruit so lots of jam has been made plus bags of frozen  berries for the winter month. Next to be harvested will be the black currants, some will be made into jam but mostly they will be used to make Ribena, vitamin C  in a bottle.

The peaches should be ready in about a week,  they are looking very good, what we can't eat fresh will be bottled. The winter store cupboard is filing up.

First of the Sweetpeas.

Both Sweet Peas

First Dahlias of the year.

and Dahlias are now flowering so lots of flowers for the house, and we have had our first picking of garden peas, the French beans are flowering, so they wont be long. So far the potatoes seem to be doing well, no sign so far of slug damage so maybe the nematodes have done their thing, I shouldn't speak too soon but so far there has been no sign of the dreaded blight although there have been plenty of warnings on the local radio station.
I survived the coronary angiogram and it appears that all is well with my heart, nice to know that something is working as it should, however the angiogram is the most unpleasant procedure I have ever had, if I ever have to have another one they will have to sedate me or knock me on the head.
Hopefully I can now stay away from hospitals until my next check up in October.

The last few days have been spent re-making the rockery, it had become very overgrown with silver weed and the dreaded mares tail, we re-discovered the water pump, so once again the pond has trickling water,

Misty is fascinated with the water.

Misty, Freddie's sister is totally fascinated with this trickle of water, and for some reason prefers to drink from it rather than her own bowl of water. The work on the rockery is not quite finished yet, but Simon has incorporated stepping stones into the rockery so it should be easier to weed without stepping on plants.

There is now lots of Ladies bedstraw growing in the hedgerows.

 

Golden Rubus, now in flower.

Cleaning up the tunnel.

The last few day I have spend tidying up the tunnel, the strawberry beds were overgrown, the tunnel pathways carpeted with suckers.

It's nice to see a cleaned bed.

I cleaned up each plant removed dozens of suckers and the beds were given a top dressing of good garden compost. It's a job I should have done last autumn but never got round to.

Quite a few of the plants already have blossom, so we might have a nice early crop.

We grow a lot of strawberries, we have four beds in total, three in the tunnel and one outside as we refuse to buy imported strawberries which are sold all year round, out of season mostly, and totally flavourless. Besides eating the fresh fruit I make quite a bit of strawberry jam and they also bottle well.
We decided we would increase the number of plants this year, so Simon has converted an old forty gallon barrel into a strawberry planter. This barrel will take fifty plants.

After heating the plastic ease the slots out to take the plants.

Firstly he marked out where the slots would go, four inches long and six inches apart, you then drill a hole so as to be able to get a small jigsaw blade in, cut the slots.

You then heat each slot with a heat gun and using a round fencing post open up the gap.

The perforated pipe will take green waste from the kitchen. just add a handful of worms.

You also need a perforated pipe in the centre either for watering or as a worm composter, we will use it for composting with worms which should give lots of good compost for the strawberry plants. You also need a few drainage holes close to the bottom of the barrel to stop it becoming waterlogged and a good layer of gravel. I would have liked the outside of the barrel covered with gravel for aesthetic purpose, but to get the gravel to stick you have to use a lot of PVA, so it will remain white,

by the time the strawberries have grown most of the barrel should be covered anyway.

Happy looking peach tree.

The peach tree in the tunnel is covered in blooms, the most we have ever had, unfortunately there are no bees or other pollinators around so the flowers will have to be hand pollinated. Not all these flowers will be allowed to develop, they would make too much weight for the branches to hold as we found out two years ago when we lost the top third of the tree due to excess weight. The lemon tree is also a mass of blooms, maybe it's going to be a good fruit year.

Eyes left.

Eyes right.

The wild birds are all busy sorting out partners including these beautiful swans, but I've not seen any nest building yet,

however the frogs have been busy and have laid a mass of spawn in our pond,

Lots of spawn.

as we lost Daffy duck this spawn should stand a good chance of reaching maturity and bless us with lots of little frogs,  we certainly have enough slugs for them to eat.

This polyanthus is much darker than it appears in the photo. 

Each time I walk around the garden I find something new in bloom, but I do suspect that we have lost a fair few bulbs due to all the rain we have had.

Three years on.

Peacock butterfly sunning it's self.

Although we are still in August the weather feels and looks far more like autumn. The plans that had been made for today went out of the window and into the heavy rain. A day of gardening had been planned,

Susy and Zara inspecting the new bed.

the new bed has been completed and given the once over by two of our cats, but I still have plenty of things waiting to be planted in it, and the new hedge was to have been started, some people might say that there is no such thing as bad weather only unsuitable clothing, maybe they are right but there is not much enjoyment or need to make a martyr of yourself and get soaking.

Planting will have to wait for another day.
Not getting outside I was browsing through the thousands of photos that we have stored on the computer I came across photos of the cottage and grounds as they were when we first saw the place.

2011 when we first viewed the place.

Two bare fields, bordered by low hedging, it was a blank canvas.

Three years on and the cottage can barely be seen.

 We are both amazed at how much we have planted and how things have grown in just three short years.

                                    We are still developing the gardens,

Our garden outside the kitchen.

one day we might reach the stage where they just have to be maintained.
 However, the veg garden produces all we need plus surplus that we can give to friends and the flower garden gives me flowers for the house for at least eight months of the year, I'm still working on the other four months.
We have been given inspiration by some of the Secret gardens of Sligo that we have been visiting, the last one was  manicured but not too inspiring

No mud would dare to show it's self.

apart from the beautiful easy to use raised veg beds, very well laid out but the gardens lacked character.

A very neat herb bed.

The herb garden was very nice and practical, no muddy feet here.

Ripe now we think and ready to pick.

Our peaches are now just about ready for picking, we are debating as to whether we should leave the tree where it is in the sunroom or forfeit some space in the tunnel, one for us to think about over the coming months.

Hopefully a years supply.

The onions and garlic have now dried and have been platted, they are now hanging in the workshop, ready for winter use.

Misty and Freddy, the best of friends again.

Freddy is now back to normal and has had his stiches out, he and Misty are again the best of friends. I'm not too sure how happy they are going to be later on this week, a friend has asked us if we can give a home to one of his late fathers kittens, as this friend keeps us well supplied in fresh trout and salmon we cant really refuse, not that we needed too much convincing. I just hope the kittens take to the new one.

Red Admiral enjoying the Marjoram flowers.