Our garden has not produced as much as usual this year. Partly that is due to not enough time to plant what we wanted. The other problem was the weather. Although the heatwave did not strike us as badly as many places in the UK, we still had enough of a problem that it affected things. Except for the lawn. The grass stayed green and grew, and grew. Lots of mowing ensued!
Sadly, the blackcurrants ended up like hard, shrivelled pellets and not even the birds wanted them. So no blackcurrant jam this year. Thankfully I think we still have one jar left from last year. But the blackberries and raspberries have been fruiting as normal and that’s great.
We didn’t plant as many beans as usual this year (bad planning!) but to be honest it’s just as well. The poor runner beans did not grow very big and shrivelled before they reached maturity or any size worth trying to eat.
However, the early fruiting plum went absolutely crazy! Fruit was so plentiful it looked like grapes. We let the birds take the high fruit (not that we could really have stopped them!!) because there was plenty lower down for us. The photo of the plums on the tree is before it ripened, but it gives you an idea of how many we had. I ended up with 8 jars of plum jam, and my beloved had plenty to make a batch of wine.
When the Victoria plums ripened, we had another very large crop. Nice and sweet. We gave a lot of those away, And ate some. And Beloved made more wine.
We bought a couple of aubergine plants with flowers on. The idea was that they’d enjoy being in the heat and might actually produce something. Within a couple of weeks the flowers dropped off. We haven’t seen any since. We’ve never been successful with aubergines and I always thought it was because they needed more heat. Do you think we should have watered them more? Whatever, I don’t think we’ll bother again.
Today I collected a lot more tomatoes. They’ve continually cropped and we’ve been enjoying them like sweets for ages. There are not enough to fill some jars for later in the year, but never mind. We’re enjoying them now.
One benefit of the hot summer is that we actually got more sweet peppers than we normally do and that’s quite exciting. They’re quite small, but look very good. I only picked them today so haven’t tried eating them yet.
The apples will soon be ripe and we have many of those, as usual. And as usual we will fill some bags up and give them away. Sometimes we give some to the local cafes and suddenly there’s a nice lot of apple pies on offer. Then we can pay to eat our own apples 😊.
Well, that’s a pretty poor show this year. Lots of plums and apples, but not much else. Although I’m pleased about the peppers.
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The other day I made dinner in a pumpkin. First I made chilli con carne. Then I filled the hollowed-out pumpkin and cooked it for an hour or so. It was yummy.
