Flowering at last

My my, it's been a long wait but finally the chillies have begun to flower. I can't believe how long they have taken. We planted them indoors in March so that's over 5 months to get to this stage. I guess our UK climate is not ideal for these fellas.

So a few more weeks and we'll be able to make our own all'Arrabbiata and if timings are good we may even be lucky enough to use some homegrown tomatoes.

Undergound Surprises

There is nothing like the surprise that you get from root vegetables. The delight in pulling up a perfectly round beetroot or a twisted knobbly carrot.

It's because you can't see what's happening. You just have to let nature takes it course and hope that everything is going according to plan. But when things start to grow, you get a tiny little glimpse of what could be, that's when I start to get impatient! I want to pull that beetroot! I want to see how big the carrots are! Just look at that beetroot - tempting us with a little peak!

But this weekend we've had disappointment to deal with. We pulled some of our first earlies and I must admit I was very underwhelmed. We went for the recently launched Accord – partly because they're ideal for containers and we'd decided early on that all our potatoes we would grow this way. They're also high yeilding and disease resistant – particularly against eelworm

We admit that we were pretty late in chitting and planting them but we honestly thought that they'd been in for a while and were ready to harvest. Here are our results from three plants!
Rubbish! 20 potatoes! And some of those so small they don't really count! We were gutted! Luckily we opted to harvest just one pot first just incase something like this happened. So the other container we're going to leave for maybe another month to hopefully increase the yield.

I think we'll try and be a little more patient with the rest of our underground friends.
Although... that baby carrot does look REALLY tempting. I must say - I have never tasted something so delicious and surprising than a home grown baby carrot. They beat the supermarket by just miles and miles.
And this year we've attempted to grow onions from seed. We use a lot of onions so it makes sense for us to grow them but I just don't get these set onions. So you buy a small onion – you put it in the ground and you get a bigger onion. Just doesn't seem worth it to me? So we never really bothered with sets. But, fingers crossed, the seeds seem to be doing OK.

Strawberry Dreams

Nothing beats a homegrown bowl of strawberries with some double cream. Yummy! I think we've probably still got enough left for another bowl each. They sure have done us proud this year – maybe triple the crop we had last year.

Easy Peasy

Oh my - fresh peas from the supermarket taste just great. But fresh peas - picked a few seconds ago from your back garden – well they just taste sublime. Tiny little green spheres bursting with the taste of summer. None have made it to the kitchen yet...

An Asian Invasion?

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the invasion of the Harlequin Asian ladybirds into the UK and how they're edging out our native species. We have a pretty healthy population of ladybirds in the garden so I thought this year I would take a shot of each one I see and compile a list.

It'll be interesting to see how many UK vs Harlequin we have.
The first two are:
This fella is a Harmonia axyridis which is yep, a Harlequin.

and yep, you've guessed it this is Harmonia axyridis conspicua – another variant of the Harlequin.

Not looking good for the UK fellas. So 2-0 to Asia so far.

New entrant as of 24 July 2010.
Harmonia axyridis... Asia 3 UK 0.

The guys over at Harlequin Survey are recording all sightings of Harlequin ladybirds over the UK. So if you do see one it would be great to let them know. They have an online form which is really easy to fill out and you can even upload your pictures and they'll email you to confirm your identification.