Andrew Williams

The beetroot looks to be doing ok from what we can see. The birds decided to help themselves to a few leaves sometime last week, but on the whole they appear to be doing fine.

In an attempt to stop the flying mafia from destroying our beets any further we covered the damaged ones with some old hamster cages.

Two of the chioggia beetroot plants are starting to go to seed, so yesterday afternoon I decided to pull one and see how they’re getting on. I was told that once beetroot starts to go to seed the bulb turns hard and tough. It was about an inch in diameter and it tasted great when eaten raw!

The inside of it was pink, and although it had a distinct beetroot flavour to it, there was also a really nice sweet after-taste as well.

I had a sneaky look at the golden burpees too and they’re coming along well. However, out of all the seeds we planted there are only about eight burpees plants that have taken. It still gives us an opportunity to try them for the first time.

I have eight mixed salad pepper plants and each plant has at least one fruit growing on it. Obviously they’re all green at the moment so it’s a little hard to tell what surprises these plants may yield.

(Sssssh, part of me is hoping that one of these plants will be a mini bell pepper plant.)

The picture on the front of the seed packet showed peppers of all colour and size, so who knows.

I really enjoy salad peppers and I’m going to keep my eye out for some more exotic salad peppers to grow next year. I want to try my hand at growing some Sheppard’s peppers next year — hopefully the seeds shouldn’t be too difficult to get hold of.

A few days ago I had to buy some bamboo canes to prop a few of the chili plants up because most of them have grown quite tall. One thing that surprised me about the salad peppers is how strong the plants are. In the past when we’ve grown salad peppers we’ve always ended up propping them up with canes, but there’s been no need for any cane intervention this year (so far anyway).

A few days back we ate the first courgette from our plants, and very nice it was too. I love courgettes and I decided to use it — along with a few broad beans from our garden — in a vegetable curry.

There are loads of courgettes still to come … and loads of flowers too. I’m going to have to go through my cookery books and find as many recipes as I can that incorporate courgettes.

Next year I think we’ll try and grow some marrows. Has anyone ever attempted to grow melons in the U.K.?

Yesterday I took a quick peek at a couple of the carrot varieties to see how they’re getting along. Yep, I can confirm that some are white (lots are white) and some are purple. I can’t get at some of them because they’re in between a few rows of flowers, but on the whole the carrots are looking ok.

I can’t remember what is planted where now, but I do know that we have something of each to try. I don’t think I’ll be growing as many carrots next year, but rather I’ll be taking my pick of the ones I like the most and will plant more of them next year.

Both varieties of tomato that we’re growing this year are coming along really well. I was in the greenhouse this morning and I took these photographs for my blog.

The surplus tomato plants that we planted out in the garden are doing well and have also started fruiting.

It shouldn’t be too long now until these start to ripen.

The tomatillo plants are really strong looking and have an abundance of fruit growing on them — there are still lots of flowers on them too, which can only mean one thing, more fruit. I don’t know why, but when I see these I envisage an alien world completely devoid of all life forms except plants.

Some of the husks are becoming harder and the fruits actually weigh quite a lot. I know this because I carried the two plants from the porch into the greenhouse a few days ago and the fruits were wobbling all over the place. At first I thought they weren’t very well attached to the plant, but when I held one it became apparent that they actually weigh quite a lot.

I certainly think that the bees have played a huge role in the tomatillos doing as well as they have. You may remember me mentioning in a previous post that I gave two tomatillo plants away, well, those plants haven’t got one single fruit on them, which is quite odd.

Tomatillos are worth growing just for the fun of it, and I’m definitely going to grow more next year. Having said that though, I have never knowingly tried them before.