Exciting news!

Well, I have sent off my application for an allotment! Whoop whoop! The guy said there is only a short waiting list, of about three months so fingers crossed I might have one before the year is out!

Also exciting stuff happening in the garden - my toms are ripening!



My costulotu fiorentino - am pleased with these as they were seeds given to me by my OH's mum who had no luck with them last year, and these have worked! Yippee! I've picked these two now and given them to her, hopefully they are tasty! I'm sure she'll tell me if they're not!



My alicante - this is the first one I started with and they're looking good! Am saving them until the weekend when my friends are coming round for a barbie, and I think we'll have them on a salad. Yum!

Growth standstill

Well, things seem to have come to a standstill in the kitchen garden recently. Tomatoes are still green, as are sweet peppers and most of the chillies. Orelia courgettes have been non-existant for a while now – I think there has been a lack of male flowers for pollination as fruit have been appearing but then falling off before developing. The Zucchini are not doing too badly, but I’m not overrun with them as I had expected I would be. However, there was a nice sight in the garden this morning – a huge bee in the open flowers. Lovely!





And here is Daisy, one of the local moggies. Quite friendly but can be a bit moody too. No more sightings of Mr Bunny so hopefully he will have been taken into somebody’s care.



Aubergines are starting to get going though – not as advanced as they should be at this time of year I don’t think, but I started them quite late (sometime in May). Anyway, they all have little tiny buds on them now so fingers crossed they will turn to flowers, then into fruit! Always the optimist! I have repotted three of them into bigger pots and they seem to be loving that. The others will unfortunately have to wait due to lack of funding in the garden area! Skint again.



I also have some okra but they are not doing that well – this is the best one…




I think that all the plants have been liking the weather recently – rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun… I can’t believe that today I overheard someone saying there was a touch of autumn in the air (!?!?!?!?!) Noooooo! There must be much more sunshine for ripening!

There’s not really much else to report on in the garden so here’s a few pictures of where I went at the weekend…. (Cockermouth, near Lake Bassenthwaite in the lake district)

This is the north part of Lake Windemere, on the journey up.






Cockermouth castle…





The sky!




Some mountains to the east of Lake Bassenthwaite, taken from Thornthwaite.





Geese! They hissed at me, so took the pic and ran!




There was a Food Festival in Cockermouth town centre and these lads were entertaining the crowds with some street circus – quite impressive actually!

They call him the wanderer....

I found this little fella on my front garden the other night, poor little thing. He'd actually been spotted a few days earlier by my OH, at about 6 in the morning (I'd actually dismissed it as an early morning hallucination when he told me he'd seen a black and white rabbit outside the house!) so he's been out for a while. After consulting a bunny owning friend, I have put out food and water to see if I can get him to come back to the house in the hope that I might be able to catch him and keep him safe in the back garden until we can find out where he belongs. I have rabbit friendly catching equipment by the front door in case he comes a-wandering again!

Thank you eBay! Now I have my own camera!

So I will be able to do lots of updates without having to rely on my unreliable Dad to bring his camera when he comes to visit! Here goes...



Here is my sweet pepper, on the 24th July - see how much it's grown!



Also my beefsteak toms are doing well, here is the biggest...





My OH's mum gave me the seeds for these, she grew them last year but couldn't get them to ripen so they ended up all rotting away. Hopefully mine will be okay, I'm looking forward to eating them.






Also some fennel, looks like it might be ready soon!

A bee in my courgettes!

Getting the work done...

My okra - another donation from the lovely people of a4a... I think mine are a little slow and they also seem to have come to a standstill with no new leaves having grown for a while.

Quick update (borrowed a digi-cam!)

Okay, so this morning I went and took some pictures of my plants and here they are....! (Please no comments about the dodgy lawn!!!)

In their entirety - funny where they came from when I only started with a couple of chillies and tomatoes!


I was given some seeds for beefsteak tomatoes, Costulotu Fiorentino, by my OH's mum - she hadn't had much joy with them last year so gave them to me (thanks, I think!?!). I have about six of these and they are all doing pretty well. Here is one of the toms off the CF, probably the biggest I've got so far but the others aren't far behind!







This is one of the originals! Cayenne chilli with about fifteen chillies on - have eaten a couple from it and they were pretty hot! Also have one of these growing in the office at work and the chillies on that one have turned a lovely red - will try to post pic soon.



Some other chillies I also have on the go are Tropical Heat, Inferno, Tabasco and a couple of others (can't remember the names!)