Garden harvests of 2025

 I realise that I didn't ever total up everything I grew and picked in the garden at home in 2025 which was a shame as it's lovely to have a record of this.  Some things in the garden were very successful and others were not to successful! 

Alpine Strawberries:  47.  Not a great sum from my 2 plants compared to my mum who had hundreds or even thousands from her many plants but much loved despite their small number. They are incredibly sweet!

Strawberries:  190.

This isn't as many as some years but better than last year I think!

Blueberries: 445

I'm quite surprised as I didn't think they were doing as well as other years but not bad from 2 plants! Many went in the freezer so I have yet to enjoys some!

Rocket:  9 handfuls.

This was disappointing! I need to plant more rocket as it is is usually prolific!

Cherries:  44

The birds got some but these were juicy and wonderful! I did also get freebies from the tree in the carpark down the road!

Raspberries:  83.

This was pathetic!!!I remember the year of 2000 and I am most annoyed at the badger or whatever killed my Autumn Bliss plants. These new varieties are not as good!

Loganberries: 1

This plant is GOING if it doesn't do something soon! So, so, so much foliage and nothing else!

Cucumbers: 9

I'm not very good at clipping these in. I think they'd have done better if I had done!

Tomatoes:  176.

This was quite successful. They did not get blight this year!

Courgettes:  14

I was pleased with these from one plant!

Runner beans:   273.

I paid 50p a piece for 2 bean plants from the yellow bungalow and their honesty box down the road and I consider this an absolute bargain! I keep meaning to pop a note through the door to thank them for their amazing plants! Next year, I will buy more! They were really good ones too! These were one of the star crops for 2025!

Rhubarb:  20 stalks:

Most of this went in the freezer and into fruit amber! I would like to plant more!

Dwarf French beans: 30

A small amount from about 6 plants but appreciated!

Everlasting onion scapes: 23. 

Considering these were free from Mum, I'm happy with this.

Peppers: 8

From One plant!  I was very happy with this!

Aztec Broccoli: 4 takeaway tubs full.

I think I messed this one up! I let it grow too much and it was too tough to eat! It grew well but I didn't know how to harvest it.

Apples: 11

The most apples we've ever had from the tree!

Nasturtium seeds:  87

I picked most of these in Vinegar and saved a few for growing next year.  These were brilliant plants and came from seeds I liberated in Madeira from the many Nasturtiums growing like weeds!

Chard: 2 handfuls

This is usually prolific so this was disappointing!

Butternut squashes:  2

Again, these would have been a lot more successful if I had planted these in the ground instead of a pot and clipped them in better! I'm not very good with climbing plants! Still, I'm proud of these two tiny babies!

Sorrell: 8 leaves

This needs new compost!

Blackcurrants: 963

The absolute star of the crops this year!  Mum gave me a titchy plant which had come from hers 2 years ago.  It grew majestic this year and kept producing! Many are in the freezer!

So there were some pleasing successes and other disappointments!  I hope we will be able to grow some exciting things this year!

Garden update

Ah, the joy of home-grown produce really is huge!

The season is starting to kick off!

Today, I picked this beautiful little haul!

It's my 2nd cucumber of the year so far.  I bought one plant and my sister germinated the other one.

The first pickings of Rhubarb.  The strawberries have been coming fast and I'm well over a hundred already.  Today included the first raspberries.  Annoyingly, the blueberries aren't so good this year or are taking a while but theese are the first few!   The rocket has been munched to shreds by wee beasties but I'm still going to eat it!  It feels very early for tomatoes but I am not complaining! I think I picked the courgette too early- it is only tiny but I thought it was restricting the others around it!

Here was last week's haul.  The cherries are delicious!  Sweeter than the ones I have been scrumping from the carpark down the road.

One of my cucumbers is absolutely determined to resist growing up its canes!

Here was another haul.  I have to say that fresh chopped mint is the best accompaniment for strawberries!

My loganberries suddenly flopped all over the lawn and knocked a whole load of blackcurrants from the plant (it's bountiful this year...but not ripe yet!)

It amazes me how a tiny stem holds a large cucumber growing!

The birds some some of the cherries but not all!

The Lavender seems very early.  The bees are cherishing it!

My Myrtle bush was looking really sick about a month or so ago. I pruned off all the dead wood and now it is thriving!

The Rhubarb amazes me. It looks so dead in the Winter and then it comes back!

The honeysuckle on the shed is beautifully fragrant.

And provides a nice platform for the birds.

The Toadflax returns with vengeance.

We thought the Campanula had gone forever but it has come back!

My neighbour gave me a different type of strawberry plant to add to my soft fruit bed. I love the red flowers.

Our Clematis as usual, defies all attempts to train it up a trellis or obelisk and climbs up the cherry tree.

 I'm delighted with the garden produce so far!

Raspberry inspiration

Last week's prompt word for the Word of the Week challenge with The Toy Press was Raspberry.

I wanted to experiment with poetic form. Often my words are narrative-based with a rhyme every line or every other line so I thought I'd have a go at using a particular poetic strict structure.

I started with one I have used Twice before (for my Noel Snail poem and my New Year's Bash) and that is the Triolet.

It has to be 8 lines long with the rhyme structure as follows:

ABaAabAB (where the A and a rhyme and the B and b rhyme with the same letter lines repeating.)

I wrote a first draft of this which I actually liked better than my final version where I tried to add in some extra adjectives or alliteration. Not my finest moment.

As I was writing, I looked at my phone where I had taken a screen shot of some other poetic structures to experiment with  and remembered I had taken a picture of something called a 'Tricube'.

The rules are:

Each line has 3 syllables

Each stanza must have 3 lines.

The poem contains 3 stanzas.

So 3 cubed!

As you can see, I took on the slang, alternative meaning of Raspberry for the final stanza. I actually ended up making the last line of each stanza rhyme. You don't have to, but somehow it happened.

Short and sweet! Like a raspberry really.

xx

At the Fruit cocktail party

 The poem I wrote during my 2nd Easter holiday week was based on using the word: "Peach.".

Actually, I'd written a poem using the word "peachy" a couple of weeks ago but I didn't have it with me. Thus, my brain on days 1 of the Pennine way was filled with trying to come up with a poem using the word. I had this idea in my mind of fruits being like 'people' or beings, being somewhat anthropomorphised,  and the idea of a Fruit Cocktail and then a Cocktail party came together.  In my mind, I started pairing/pearing (ha!) fruits with actions I might say to them or do with them.  At lunchtime, I quickly put some fruits into a memo on my phone plus potential paired rhyming words or phrases.  Later on, when walking, I asked CBC if he could think of some fruits one point, he came up with Guava, Kumquat, Fig and Greengage as unique ones I hadn't thought of. I quickly abandoned any of the -berry suffixed ones as they ended up with too many syllables to maintain a nice flow. As I walked, and I pondered on rhymes for the ones CBC had suggested, I could not, for the life of me, remember what the 4th one was.  It was a good 2 hours before both he and I remembered Greengage.

When we reached our accommodation for the night, The Forest View Walkers Inn, I typed into my Memo to come up with the poem itself.  I realised that I wanted a very rhythmic poem and the refrain line of 'At the Fruit cocktail party' rather than just being the title, came to end each stanza.

My family thought this one wasn't my finest, but I quite like the weird nature on it!

Here it is:

At the Fruit Cocktail Party:

First, say "Hiya!" to Papaya, 

Pass the time with a Lime, 

Hear a speech from a Peach

At the Fruit Cocktail Party! 

Act quite mighty with a Lychee, 

Say,   "Mañana? " to Banana, 

Eat a lot with Apricot, 

At the Fruit Cocktail Party! 

Do a Tango with a Mango, 

Dance a Jig with a Fig, 

A Foxtrot with Kumquat, 

At the Fruit Cocktail Party! 

Laugh "Tee hee!" with Kiwi

And make merry with a Cherry 

Then engage with Greengage

At the Fruit Cocktail party! 

Have a grapple with an apple, 

Then escape from a grape, 

Make a scene with Nectarine, 

At the Fruit Cocktail Party!

Now, I just need to create some little cartoons showing these fruit encounters occurring!

Eyes

I cut open a Kiwi fruit a couple of weeks ago and it struck me how particularly beautiful this fruit was, it almost resembled a pair of eyes. 

 

Garden joy

 It seems a bit late sharing this now but I was enjoying some of the late flowers and colours in early October and I thought it would be nice to share them, particularly as it is now all yucky and rainy/dark!

I love the way Verbena Bonariensis defies gravity!  It leans at all sorts of awkward angles but is a delight to all the polinators.

I think this one is Nandina Domestica.  It looks so jolly and red in the Autumn and dons berries for jewellery

The cosmos hasn't been particularly successful this year but this self-seeded set has appeared out of the lawn!

The fuscias are still blooming- delicate ballerinas caught mid-jete.

The lemon tree has thrived this Summer after CBC kept treating it with anti-scale insect treatment, the advice he was given on GQT after a roasting!

Amusingly, a line of Nigella has grown at the edge of the lawn, in the drain grating!

The Blueberry plants always don their red robes at the end of the season.

I've still been picking these 5 edibles up to this week! I wonder what I will find outside tomorrow morning?

I relocated a Nasturtium to the soft fruit bed and it's finally growing!

Let's see the Cosmos again!

Here's another Autumn harvest.

A healthy-looking Lemon Balm plant has begun to grow in the lawn to which I have no objections- free tea!

Ah, there's another of the Nigella!

The warmer months always show their love by the bounty they share! I've enjoyed the feast.

xx

Homegrown harvests 2022 totals

I've enjoyed growing lots of  things these last few years but I've never been organised enough to keep totals of what I've grown- this is a shame as I've had some bumper years for raspberries!

However, this year, in mid-June, I remembered to start writing down what I was picking. This means there is probably about 10 large colanders of Rocket and a bunch of alpine strawberries or more, which didn't make it into the totals as well as a whole lot of Perpetual spinach and Welsh onion scapes!

Strawberries: 517

Rocket: 9 colanders full.

Raspberries: 623

Green Beans: 108

Blueberries: 478

Courgettes: 8

Cucumbers: 9

Capers (Nasturtium seeds): 59

Peas: 77

Figs: 10

Apples: 3

Alpine Strawberries: 15

Rhubarb:34 stalks

Tomatoes: 1007

Leeks: 2

It wasn't such a good year for raspberries as previous years as several of my plants didn't grow back- I think I cut them back too late. But still, there were a lot.

It wasn't a good year for Courgettes.  I think they need more space or water.

The rocket was hugely prolific! A lot of it didn't actually get eaten as I couldn't keep up with it- I shared lots of it with work colleagues.

For the first time in 3 years, my tomatoes did not get blight- I was so happy and my September and October were full of home grown tomatoes.

It's the first time I've been able to eat my own figs- they weren't huge but they were still mine!

It has been the best haul of blueberries I've had and the strawberries did well too.

My Nasturtiums were really good this year and I finally managed to get seeds which I put into vinegar to make capers (as recommended by Vix!)

I am sad I didn't plant garlic last year but I intend to this year.  

The feeling of picking your own is amazing! I hope that I do as well next year!

xx

Will they, won't they?

When I used to live in my childhood home, we had a fig tree in the garden.  When I was the last inhabitant in the house (sister and mother had both moved out!), I grew to love that fig tree. Amazing, massive leaves and I tried the fruits as an adult for the first time and loved them!  They were really sweet, tasty and easy to eat though I had to compete with Mr Squirrel- I often shook my fist at him when I found them discarded with a bite out of them on the lawn! They always seem to be very expensive when fresh in shops so I really missed having that tree when I moved out.

Fast forward a few years and Mum gave me a small fig tree from Grandad's garden that he had grafted from cuttings from the original home one. 

We've had it in a pot for the last few years but never had any fruit. They never seemed to grow much. The one year, 2020, when it actually had 2 viable fruits on it, they dropped off in the heat when we were away. Last year, nothing grew.

This year, I noticed, fairly late, that there were quite a few embryo fruits developing.

Monty Don says that any Pea-sized fruits must be removed for Winter as they won't grow but I was hopeful, with the heat, that these might have a chance.

Here's a photo of a few of them.  They are still very small BUT, do you think there is any chance they will get bigger and ripen in time for me to FINALLY get to eat some?

It was lovely to pick ripe figs from the trees near our house in France. Will I get to picky my own?

Whilst I am here, here are some of the flowers currently in our garden. Most of the flowers have gone but we still have...

Purple Clematis.

Yellow roses.

Chilean Jasmine (We need to remember to bring this one in for Winter as last year's one got too cold outside!)

So, let's take your votes on the figs. They are about 4cm by 1.5-2cm-ish.... will they ripen and grow in time and if so, any tips to help them!??!

xx

Home grown harvests

 Ah, there is nothing better than the SMUGNESS of having grown your own fruit and veg!

I've had lots of lovely fruit (and the odd bit of veg so far). I think I will share my stats of harvests at the end of the season (as I've actually counted this year!) but in the meantime, here are a few of my harvests...

Garden flowers

 I've been really enjoying the garden recently.

Here are some examples of  Spring growth

CBC loved his Chilean Jasmine last year. It was too cold in the winter so it died but he bought a new onee.

Blueberries which I want to eat before Mrs Blackbird!

The Clematis has shunned the Willow trellis in favour of using the cherry tree as support!

The yellow rose is back with vengeance!

The white Campanula always grows alongside the Rose. Delicate and attractive!

The bees adore the Nigella flowers. 

We always wonder what colour they will be!

The Foxgloves multiply each year. The bumble bees adore them.

The Syringa/Bottle Brush tree is so bright and cheery!

I grew leeks from the remains of old ones! The Perpetual spinach continues to take over as it bolts but I just keep cutting back the bolting!

I'm rich in rocket. It just keeps giving and I've shared it with colleagues and friends.

Here are my peas in the raised bed. They are much bigger now.

As well as my raspberries, Mum gave me a blackcurrant plant. It is enjoying the soft fruit bed.

The Dianthus find their way each year.

The Geraniums never fail either.

I've enjoyed many batches of Spinach, rocket and Welsh onion scapes.

I've even been harvesting Fat Hen from the flower planter. It's a weed but one that tastes just like Spinach!

Here were the first of the strawberries last week but today I picked 28 strawberries and 15 stalks of Rhubarb! I love edibles!

How has your garden been growing?