Garden Latest

Since my last report on our vegetable growing, things have come along quite well. It seems we do have green fingers (or perhaps greenish fingers) after all.

For over a month, we've been eating lettuce from the garden, as well as rocket and some other salad leaves. We started off simply plucking a few leaves rather than pulling whole lettuces, in the hope of prolonging the harvest. In this we may have succeeded to some extent, but we've also succeeded in allowing lots of the lettuce to bolt and run to seed...

Just coming ripe now are tomatoes. I originally bought seedlings of some unknown variety at Tabua market. Not knowing much, I planted them far too close together, so now we have a jungle of tomato plants growing up a pyramid of canes. I also grew two varieties from seed -- Roma V and another. At first I thought they wouldn't survive, but after some time in seed modules I planted them out -- also too close together -- and these now are beginning to produce fruit. A couple of days ago, we picked the first tomato from the seedling-grown plants. Today three were ripe. I suspect we'll be inundated within the week...

The bell peppers (piman) have been very slow, and for a long time I doubted that they would do anything. These were also seedlings picked up at Tabua market. Finally, though, they flowered, and we now have some tiny (but growing fast) peppers.

Courgettes (zucchini) are another seedling-grown vegetable. They are going great guns, and we picked the first couple this morning. They were great in salad at lunchtime and also in a pasta sauce for dinner.

Snowpeas (at least that's what I think they are; they are developing more like ordinary green peas...). I sowed a couple of short rows from seed, along with edamame (a great Japanese snack bean).

Aside from the vegetables photographed, the onions are doing fine, we've harvested one beetroot and a couple of Japanese daikon, while we've been enjoying greens from an odd white variety of beet for a month or so. I've also picked some of the root; it tastes like beetroot, but is very odd because the taste of beetroot is so closely associated with the colour red.

Finally, the potatoes are perhaps best not talked about. We've got Colorado beetle, and also failed to water well enought. Fortunately, though, our neighbour Alice has enough potatoes to feed an army, so I doubt if we'll go short....