God I love growing our own

[Amari]

For clarity, I assume you're interested in achieving relatively high temperatures as a means of killing off any viable seeds in the compost?

James

Yes

 

[JamezF]

With dinner tonight we ate the last of our fresh cherry tomatoes. I'm genuinely amazed that they've lasted this long. I harvested them some weeks back when they were green and we've just been picking the ripe ones out to eat ever since.

James

 

[JamezF]

Weirder and weirder, said Alice...

These are the pepper plants in the polytunnel, earlier today.

All looking a bit sorry for themselves. I'd have removed them already if I'd had time.

On the other hand, these are the plants in Frankenstein's greenhouse, also earlier today, whilst I was replacing the pane of glass that fell victim to Storm Darragh.

Obviously I'm going to leave them to see if they make it all the way through the Winter. It's hard to believe such a thing might be possible the way things have been this year, who knows? It is tempting to make a little frame so I can drape some fleece over the top of them to give a bit more protection from frost, I have to admit. I was going to line the greenhouse with bubblewrap this Autumn, but ran out of, well, everything, really.

James

 

[Penninetrader]

Time the shortest of commodities

 

[JamezF]

First day of a new year so despite the rain and gloom I've been outside in the veggie plot. Mostly just to do some watering in the polytunnel/greenhouses, but as temperatures are forecast to plummet to something vaguely approximating "normal for Winter" over the next few days I've been putting a load of fleece over the pepper plants in Frankenstein's greenhouse. They're still resolutely hanging in there and I'd love to see them make it through the rest of the Winter now. I might whack a couple of candles under plant pots into the greenhouse just to try to keep the temperature above freezing if possible.

Whilst fighting with the fleece I also found my first harvest of 2025:

And perhaps even more surprising, these:

Some of the garlic is just starting to poke its nose out of the soil too. Always reassuring to see that coming up, especially this year given that I ended up planting the cloves a little later than I'd prefer to.

James

 

[enrico]

Does anyone use Yorkshire Seed Company? Really cheap seeds AND 35 percent off today. Just wondered if you had good or bad reviews.

 

[JamezF]

This afternoon I have been making candles. A beekeeper's craft perhaps, but in this case nothing to do with beekeeping... My wife and I collected together all of the unusable ends of (non-beeswax) candles that we've had after using them during the many power cuts we had in 2024 and I've melted them down and remade new candles using moulds made from tins for dried yeast.

The intention is to use them in the greenhouse (as mentioned a couple of posts back) to try to keep the frost at bay and nurse my pepper plants through the rest of Winter.

James