Garden Produce 2009

The summer we've had this year, i.e. plenty of rain, some sun and fairly warm temperatures should have produced plenty of produce from my little plot.

We covered the rhubarb roots very early in the spring with a large black plastic tub to force it. The slender pale pink stems emerged and we had some lovely stewed rhubarb, sweetened with Sweet Cicily and rhubarb crumble puddings during the spring.

I bought three tomato plants back in early spring and decided to plant them in pots instead of in the Veg plot. They grew well and I controlled the watering and feeding reasonably well. The result, a healthy crop of sweet tomato's. There are still more to ripen but the ripening slowing down now with the autumn approaching. I'll soon have to resort to picking them to ripen indoors.

I bought two 'Gardeners Delight' plants always a good choice and a variety of a small plumb tomato whose name escapes me at the moment. The plumb tomatoes has definitely been the best cropper.

My white grape vine growing up the garages south wall has grown vigorously this year and produced a good crop of grapes. I have no idea of the variety as the cutting came from a cutting surreptitiously removed cutting from King Henry the 8th grape vine in Hampton Court Palace in Richmond. Not by me I hasten to add! I saw this ancient vine many years ago. It's enormous, with its roots growing outside and the fruiting vine growing along the full roof length of a very large green house. My vine has been planted and growing now for about 12 years. It hasn't fruited very well so far and has produced sparse small sweet bunches of grapes.

This year it decided to be much more productive. Obviously the weather has been more suited to it's needs. Did I get to taste the grapes. NO. As you can see the pesky wasps found and stripped the vine of every bunch before I realised what was happening.

The green runner beans grew well and produced a plentiful crop. We had quite a few dinners from them but they were at their most productive during the three weeks of our Canadian visitors. So while we were gadding about and eating out they were growing tough and inedible. What a shame.

I still have some peaches on my dwarf peach tree that the wasps haven't found. So I'm keeping a very close eye on the ripening process as the tree has produced more peaches this year than it has done ever before. Maybe it sensed that I was about to give up on it and dig it out. Who knows?