God I love growing our own

[JamezF]

Let us know your thoughts on the book. It sounds suitable for a. Christmas present for a relative I have in mind.

After a quick first scan through it looks pretty good. It seems to work through recipes (including a few for butter and yoghurt) in rough order of complexity, so if I just follow the order in which they present things perhaps that will help build confidence (and avoid having to buy/find lots of equipment all at once). I then found Cheese and Yoghurt Making as a source for equipment and ingredients. They have a free "e-book" on cheese-making for newbies linked from their home page which was also a useful read.

James

 

[Moobee]

Those red tomatoes are exactly the same heart shape as the 'unknown' ones I had that survived blight when everything else succumbed .. what variety are they ?

Pink Oxheart. During the throes of what little summer we had, they were larger than these with a very pink tinge to them. Good flavour & juicy as well.

 

[judy12]

My winter broad beans are already through and about an inch high .. they are under a cloche and so protected from the worst of the rain we've had which has rendered most of the garden into what can only be described as a bog ! Despite the storms the air temperature remains quite warm and in the greenhouse my chillies are still (very slowly) ripening. Several kilos of Medlars are now bletting in trays courtesy of Dani - it wll be awhile before they are ready for processing but some nice juicy looking fruit. Picked (and ate !) a couple of autumn fruiting raspberries - a rare treat this late in the year. Carved a pumpkin for Halloween and used fhe flesh to make some totally uninspiring soup - despite the addition of garlic, onions, turmeric, ginger, chillies, cayenne pepper, all spice etc. - there was a lovely after glow but the soup was tasteless !! Not up to our usual home grown butternut squash soup. Brussels sprouts are not developing much in the way of sprouts and the kale has been decimated by the pigeons - I should have netted it. Time for some autumn pruning next and a general tidy up and mulch ... have to empty my leaf mould bins as this years leaves are covering the lawn.

What do you do with your medlars apart from making jelly?

 

[Erichalfbee]

What do you do with your medlars apart from making jelly?

I have made medlar tart which is a really scrumptious desert.
I don’t know if once bletted the pulp freezes. If it does you can have a good supply to use through the year.
Couldn’t be bothered this year so Philip has them

 

[pargyle]

What do you do with your medlars apart from making jelly?

They can add a new flavour dimension to an apple pie when you mix the pulp in which I did once - but this is only the second time I've had enough of them to make anything other than medlar jelly/jam. To be honest, there's not a lot of recipes for anything much else. There is such a small amount of usable flesh in a medlar that you would need buckets of them to make anything substantial in culinary terms. At least when you make jelly you are using the whole fruit and you avoid the toil of scooping out the flesh to use it in something else.

 

[Hux70]

Bit late to this thread but here are a few of my successes this year. Palermo peppers grown from seeds saved from an Aldi pepper, some huge onions Exhibition and my new favourite tomato Burlesque. Everything else was a bit rubbish for some reason apart from the chillies. Try again next year!

 

[JamezF]

You may have got lucky with the pepper. As far as I can see it's an F1 variety, so there's no guarantee of them coming true from seed. It looks great though. If you have any that are really ripe you could try saving the seed and growing them again next your, though if you've been growing them near your chiles there's a fair chance the two will have crossed. Peppers are apparently rather promiscuous I tried putting little "socks" over some flowers on mine just before they opened this year (because they will also self-pollinate and therefore the seeds will be the same as the parent plant), but didn't have a huge amount of success.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

Has anybody tried Burpee’s Long Keeper tomato?

 

[JamezF]

Has anybody tried Burpee’s Long Keeper tomato?

I haven't, but I was looking at another variety from Real Seeds called De Colgar that is supposed to keep well. I suspect however that if I grow any more tomatoes then words will be said. I don't know why. I'm sure there's no such thing as "too many tomatoes".

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

I just bought a pack and will have a go. We are out of fresh tomatoes now and the supermarket ones are absolutely tasteless

 

[JamezF]

We're down to our last few. I picked the last of the ripe cherry tomatoes at the weekend and there aren't many larger fruit on the other plants; most are still green anyhow and there doesn't seem much chance of them ripening now.

James

 

[rossbyjove]

Has anybody tried Burpee’s Long Keeper tomato?

Real seed company does a tomato variety called COLGAR that keeps for months.

 

[rossbyjove]

I haven't, but I was looking at another variety from Real Seeds called De Colgar that is supposed to keep well. I suspect however that if I grow any more tomatoes then words will be said. I don't know why. I'm sure there's no such thing as "too many tomatoes".

James

You beat me too it.
Colgar keeps for ages.
I also bought some Achocha (Bolivian cucumber) from them, had them before but put in too late this year to get much. Its Capsicum texture with cucumber flavour, salads or cooked.
It's a massive climber with a lot of fruits.
Bees seem to like it.

 

[Moobee]

Bit late to this thread but here are a few of my successes this year. Palermo peppers grown from seeds saved from an Aldi pepper, some huge onions Exhibition and my new favourite tomato Burlesque. Everything else was a bit rubbish for some reason apart from the chillies. Try again next year!

Oh I grew Burlesque this year too - really nice flavour.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Colgar keeps for ages.

What does it taste like?

 

[JamezF]

What does it taste like?

A bit like a tomato?

James

 

[JamezF]

There are still a few fruit left on the plants in Frankenstein's Greenhouse, but today I took all the tomatoes that looked like they might be worth having off the vines in the polytunnel. We've eaten/jarred/frozen an awful lot of tomatoes this year and there weren't many left.

That done, I took out all of the vines. The polytunnel looks a bit sad now. There will be new plants going back in very shortly though. I was hoping to leave it totally clear of plants for a few days because there's a bit of a whitefly problem, but there are still fruit on some of the peppers and given that most of them still have loads of leaf I'm hoping they might ripen a little further despite the poor weather. The tall plants about halfway down on the left are Peppadew peppers (allegedly). They're at least eight feet tall and covered in unripe fruit, which is actually the best I've ever achieved with them. I suspect they need more warmth, so if I can get seed for next year I'll put them in the greenhouse.

Need to repair the end door, too. The polythene has clearly given up over the last week or so.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

A bit like a tomato?

James

Do they all taste the same?

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Do they all taste the same?

to be honest - a tomato that can last for weeks reminds me very much of the standard supermarket offerings

 

[JamezF]

Do they all taste the same?

I was joking

James