Changes

The butter beans have baby bean pods on them! And one of the outdoor peppers has a little pepper growing. There are tiny green tomatoes on several of the outdoor tomato plants, too - Roma, Bloody Butcher, and something I haven't got a name for. Possibly a Moneymaker.

The indoor tomatoes are looking unhappy (limp and mottled) and my research indicated that they might be suffering from mites. I bought some Tomato Dust and have given them all a liberal coating, so I hope that helps. And the three huge tomatoes on the Black Krim were too much for the plant to hold and the whole stem ripped right off. I have them on the windowsill now and one of the tomatoes has ripened to a gratifying pink colour, so maybe I'll still get to eat them, but it's hardly an ideal solution. If that plant produces any more fruit I'll have to find some way of rigging up a support so this doesn't happen again.

Some things growing, some things dying

I ripped three tomato plants out of their tubs today. They were diseased-looking, with yellow leaves and soft stems, and the tomatoes weren't how they should have been on the two Early Girls. They were smaller than cherry tomato sized in the most part, and tough as old boots. Only the chickens would eat them.

The third plant was a Moneymaker which had lost almost all its leaves. It was starting to flower at the very top, but it looked awful and I didn't hold out much hope for a good crop from it (certainly not compared to the Moneymaker in the conservatory, which is covered in green fruit at the moment). I think the chickens did a lot of damage at the bottom of the plant, but it was right beside the Early Girls and may have got whatever they had. It's in the bin too, now.

On the plus side, I've got green tomatoes on the Black Krim, Betterboy, and Aunt Ruby's German Green plants inside, and green peppers too! Banana peppers and capsicums, hurrah. Can't wait till they ripen.

 

The climbing beans outside are flowering, and clinging very nicely to the sweetcorn.

And there are millions of apples (probably no exaggeration) on the big old tree at the bottom of the garden.

The strawberries have slowed down a bit but are still producing, and it won't be long before the red onions are ready to pull. They look huge but the tops are still green and show no signs of going to seed so I should probably leave them a bit longer.

A photographic garden update

The indoor tomatoes are growing really tall (and wilting in the heat despite the copious amounts of water they get):

There are little green peppers on several of the pepper plants - this one is a Chocolate Beauty which should turn brown when ripe:

The cucumbers are starting to produce fruit:

Green beans wind their way up the netting:

The sweetcorn has pollen on top and silks below:

The remaining broccoli has all been ripped up and fed to the chickens (they LOVE it) and we have a few empty-looking beds at the moment:

But never fear, there are things planted in most of those empty squares. Sorry-looking wind-battered peppers, tiny tomatoes, seeds for basil, carrots, and muk chow, seedlings for purple cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli, and also a couple of pumpkins and a butternut squash. It looks bare right now but I hope it'll fill out over coming weeks.

Mmmm, strawberries

The garden's going great. I just gathered a bowlful of strawberries for dessert:

There are lots more ripening on the plants outside.

 The broccoli is enormous, taking over the whole bed and dwarfing the poor little tomato plants in the back.

 

The silverbeet has grown completely out of control and I doubt it's fit for us to eat now - it's going to seed - but the chickens will enjoy the leaves.

 The sweetcorn and purple beans are getting there, slowly but surely.

And the onions and leeks are doing well too.

Even the spuds are coming along nicely in their plastic bags of compost (as are the weeds running rampant behind them).

We have had almost no weeding to do in the raised beds, which is fantastic - weeds only grow in the soil that we haven't yet levelled and covered with weed mat. The only problem so far is that the plants (broccoli and spinach) in one of the beds are not thriving, and some weird fungus has been growing in that soil. I think there was something funny about the compost we put in that one, but unfortunately I have no idea what it was. It's annoying, and honestly I am not terribly keen on eating anything that comes out of that bed because I'm not sure what it's growing in. Fortunately I do no not eat green leafy vegetables anyway so I don't have to worry about it right now!