Sleep Interrupted

Yesterday was the Wokingham Horticultural Society Summer Show. They hold four shows a year, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, and it is a chance for members to show of their vegetables, fruit, flowers and domestic produce in various categories.
I entered three categores, from the Domestic Section, a cherry cake, following the given recipe, and some ginger biscuits, 5, any recipe. Well, the cake turned out okay, but sadly when cut open by the judges, all the cherries had sunk. Not sure why as I had coated them in flour which is supposed to prevent that. Tasted pretty nice though. The ginger biscuits were a bit of a disaster. The first recipe seemed good, placed the little balls of dough on the tray, only to find they had spread to the approximate thickness of a sheet of paper, and refused to be lifted from the tray in one piece. The second recipe and batch were better, quite crumbly, but not gingery enough. No prizes there either.

The final category was for peas, 9 pods. The flower had to be attached, and the pods arranged on a plate, with tail ends facing out. I have to admit, my peas looked pretty good on the plate, I had chosen nine of the same size, nice even colouring and no blemishes. They did however look quite small next to some of the other entries. But they did alright, and I got a Third Prize for them. My little certificate is now going to be pinned up in my shed. I am feeling quite proud. The next show is in September, by then Andrew, Ben and Jessica will be fed up with eating fruit scones, as that is the challenge of the Domestic Section, and I intend to perfect my recipe.

Well, for the most part, the vegetables are doing well. The recent rainy weather has been great, saved me loads of watering, but has also meant the tomatoes are taking their time in ripening. Still, can’t have it both ways I suppose.

The carrots are looking really good, very tall, bushy green leaves, just hope under the surface carrots are growing. I did have a bit of a sneaky dig and saw a glimpse of orange, so I am fairly sure there are carrots there. The remaining parsnip plants are looking good too, they have been really tricky to grow. The beans in pots have had a spurt recently, and today I saw they have some pale purple flowers. So optimistic for them now too.

The pumpkins are a tough one. They grew really quickly from seed, and once planted in the raised bed have just gone mad. I have completely underestimated how much room they will need/take. Reading on some vegetable websites, you can let one plant spread itself over about 100sq feet. Sadly, I have about five squashed into a small space so not sure how they will do. Have already got some female flowers on their, but once the fruit start to grow it is stopping them from rotting which is the next problem.

And finally the peas. They have done pretty well. Although not quite as tall or as leafy as I thought they would get, they have had a fair few pods on. And the peas inside are perfectly form, and without disease, which is good. I have been picking a few when they look ready, and immediately freezing the peas to preserve taste and quality. Except now the children have decided they much prefer eating raw peas straight from the pod – they are very sweet. See more about my peas in the next post.

I appear to be turning into quite the blogger, this is my third this month I think. Anyway, had some time to myself this afternoon as both children are at nursery/pre-school, so finally got around to doing some gardening.

Last year I had a somewhat surprising success at growing French beans, I had always fancied growing my own veg, saw the seeds and thought “Why not?”. So planted them and they actually did what they said on the packet, and grew, giving us quite a lot of beans. The children really liked them, think it was because they had a hand in the planting and picking. We also grew strawberries and tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, lots of green tomatoes that made chutney (note to self – that is probably ready for eating now) and a few strawberries. Would have had more, but the second they turned red, Jessica ate them off the plant.

So this year have got a bit more organised and have got a raised bed of some size, constructed by my lovely husband. It has taken huge amounts of soil to fill it, but it is looking good. Had a minor set back with some lettuce and parsnip seeds whereby Ben and his girl friend from across the road decided to plant a mixture of bean and pumpkin seeds over th top, not sure how that is going to turn out – picked a load of the seeds out, but who knows? Don’t think it will have done the lettuce a lot of good.

Anyway, back to this afternoon. Have had quite a constructive time, have put up stakes and string ready for planting out the pea plants (Ben’s choice). In the raised beds I have planted out the pumpkin plants (Jessica’s choice), the parsnip seedlings and a dozen leek plants. Have got some more leeks to do, but figured I would try and stagger the planting so they are not all ready at the same time – am hoping this works.

Have gone for bush tomatoes this year, should hopefully produce a lot of small fruit on a compact bush, so no need for staking. They are already doing really well, with lots of flowers on a couple of them already. Am now wondering it if is too late to plant some cucumber seeds, although I think they are quite tricky – certainly didn’t have much luck with te marrows last year, they got to a certain size and just rotted away.

So this is the first of my vegetable blogs, if it all goes quiet you know I will have had some sort of setback and given the whole thing up. The next big challenge in the garden is taking down the greenhouse that has been here since we moved in, and don’t really use, and assembling the shed I had delivered last week. The greenhouse already has a new home to go to; we put it up on our local freecycle site. This site really deserves a post of it’s own, but will leave that for another day. Take a look anyway.