Harvest totals

Strawberries: 332g
Tomatoes: 123g

Some of the sweetcorn is three feet high and flowering. Some of the sweetcorn - in the same bed, planted at the same time - is less than a foot high. Strange. I've got no idea why this would be so.

Basil and lettuces are germinating, gherkins and courgette seedlings are almost ready to plant out, and the cucumbers are flowering. All is well in gardening world today.

Christmas harvest

Despite the fact that some of the potato plants haven't even started flowering, I was determined to get a few baby potatoes to have with Christmas lunch today. After fossicking around in all the bags, I discovered two things:
1) there's not enough compost in there, and
2) there aren't many potatoes either.

However we did manage to get a handful of teeny tiny spuds, so hurrah for that! And some of them are an exciting purple colour. I look forward to seeing how they taste.

We also pulled some carrots and found some more ripe strawberries, as well as a couple more tomatoes.

Potatoes - 113g
Carrots - 221g
Tomatoes - 94g
Strawberries - 193g

The things that look like plums or dark pebbles are actually potatoes. They are so purple on the outside that they  look almost black, and on the inside they look like this:

I haven't cooked them yet so don't know if they retain the colour after cooking, but they certainly look great raw.

Harvest totals

I've belatedly realised that it'd be smart to keep track of the total amount of food we harvest from our vegetable garden. Of course it's way too late to tell how much lettuce and radish we got a few weeks back - those are long gone, and the replacement lettuces haven't grown big enough to eat yet. I should have been more organised with the succession planting so I didn't have this big gap.

Anyway, here is what I estimate we have harvested so far:
Strawberries - 1112g
Raspberries - 20g
Tomatoes (Early Girl) - 183g
Total:  1315g

I'll try to keep a more accurate total from now on, and do my best to keep track of the tomatoes per variety. I'm planting a wide variety this year but if something is noticeably better or more prolific than something else then I should tailor next year's planting to suit.

More beds built

Even though it was almost too hot to work yesterday (I put on SPF30 before heading out the door, but forgot about my back and now have a sunburnt strip just above the waistband of my shorts - ouch), my husband and I got out there in the garden and finally finished levelling it. Today we got two more raised beds made and filled. That brings the total plantable area of our vegetable garden to 16 square metres, which should be plenty for two people. And that's not counting all the tubs of tomatoes and peppers, the fruit trees dotted around our whole property, or the plastic bags with potatoes growing in them.

Here's how things look today:

 

I know you can't see all the beds properly, so here's the layout that I use in my Excel spreadsheet. Yes, I am project-managing my garden using Excel. And no, I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Just as a reminder of how far we've come, here is how the garden looked in August 2008:

Here's how it looked in September 2008, after a hard day's work and vast amounts of help from our friends Fi and Rich:

And here's how it looked a year ago, as we attempted a traditional garden:

I can't help but be pleased with the order we imposed on the jungle that was there originally, and how much easier gardening is this year compared to the row-style gardening we were doing a year ago. Okay, so it's been a lot of work setting up all the raised beds, and not particularly cheap either, but now that we have that done we should be good to go for the next few years with only the addition of compost to keep the beds fertile. No more muddy feet, as we now have lovely paths between the beds, and no weeding to speak of either.

As far as results go, it's a bit early to judge for most things but I can tell you that the strawberries are doing very well indeed. We gather a couple of handfuls every day at the moment, and everyone who's tasted them has commented on how they "taste like proper strawberries!" compared to the bland watery supermarket offerings. Next year I'll be doing two square metres of strawberry plants rather than just one.

Tomato change of plan

Much to my disappointment, the three Green Zebra tomato plants are failing to thrive. I planted one of these outside at the end of October (probably a bit early, in fairness) and one at the end of November, and they haven't grown at all. A third one was planted on the deck and it's doing a little better, but the two in the garden are a bust. Can you even see the poor little scrap of green just above the marigold flower in this photo?

Given how much better most of the other tomato plants are doing, and how many I have still languishing in little seedling pots in the conservatory, I think the Green Zebras have got to go. It's disappointing, but I'd rather have something else than realise halfway through the summer that I'm not going to get any fruit. My garden has no space for plants that don't pay their way in some form or other, be it pretty flowers or something to put on the dinner plate. There's a Sungold and a Cherry Sweetie that'll do nicely in those spots, I think, so it's time to plant them out!

Got my first ripe tomato

Today had cause for celebration - as I was watering the tomato plants in the conservatory I found the first red one of the season!

I ate it straight away - a couple of slices went straight into my mouth (still warm from the sunshine, delicious) and the rest went into a ham sandwich. My verdict: perfect.