It's official, it hasn't been a great growing year for some fruit & vegetables according to Gardeners' World. One particular fruit highlighted is the tomato - it's been suggested that the fluctuating temperatures have produced a sporadic crop that has been slow to ripen. I can vouch for that; one minute in the greenhouse it's been in the 40's by day then by night it has fallen as low as 4C.
I certainly have a good number of tomatoes in the greenhouse but they have taken a long time to develop, no doubt giving a truncated fruiting season this year. There will be many more that won't ripen before the temperatures really start cooling in the next six weeks.
On a more positive note, the new potatoes have been really good. The variety Rocket have been great and, though the second early Maris Peer could have been more plentiful, they turned out to be a good size. I've dug up the last of them now and the remainder will easily last us into September. I've cleared the weeds, tilled over the new potato bed and have covered it, mainly to keep the cats off and to cut down the number of Autumn seeds blowing onto the earth.
Just a quick mention of some other things cropping at the moment; I'm still taking cabbage, kohl rabi, potatoes, courgettes, runner & french beans, finger carrots as well as the stored onions, garlic and broad beans. Still developing are sweet corn, beetroot, kale, swede, winter squashes (butternut, turks turban and pumpkin), main crop spuds, parsnips, leeks, main crop carrots and brussels sprouts. Unfortunately my experiment in growing cauliflower doesn't look promising but more on that later in the month.
One job that needed to be done was the removal of the old raspberry canes and the tying in of the new growth. I mainly have summer fruiting raspberries which means that the fruit grows on the previous year's canes. So, I've been cutting out the spent canes that developed last year and fruited this year while tying in the newly grown canes that will provide the raspberries next summer.
Once the raspberry rows have been tidied up it was a lot easier to do a spot of weeding around their bases. The rest of the fruit bed needs a good sort out too but that can wait a few weeks as I've other jobs to get on with.
See you next time.
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