All Blog Posts Tagged 'Vegetables' (27)

Another unfinished blog I never got around to completing, last year I had a great crop of Courgettes and these were two of the best ones from each variety. Starting with my round variety called 'Tondo di Piacenza', and then my long variety called 'All Green Bush'; they look and tasted gorgeous.



Sadly I have no garden or balcony at the moment, so I will miss growing these this year.…

Early September last year, I was very busy on the balcony, harvesting a few of my crops and storing them away. Firstly the two varieties of the Chilies we had been growing were ready to pick, the 'Inferno Chilli' which have stayed green for a while and don't seem to want to turn red, were picked and then the red 'Hot Chilies', which are a cute small size. …

I've just been looking through my blog which I must say I have neglected over the last few months, due to my move and I've come across a few blogs I'd started, this being one.



Last year I grew my first ever batch of Cabbage and I'm happy to say that they turned out very well. I was a little reluctant as I did loose quiet a few in the first few months, but during the summer they came on leaps and bounds and I got four great heads of Cabbage to show for it.



These have…

As you all may know, late last year, around October time, The Little Balcony was dismantled and taken apart, due to our recent move and since then, and luckily for me, there wasn't really much I could do anyway in the way of gardening, as winter was also setting in for the year.

The new year has now come around and normally around this time of the year I'd start prepping for this year growing session, which I really enjoy doing, I can't normally wait to get all the seeds out and…

Sadly last weekend The Little Balcony was packed up and taken to a new location. Our current London flat was sold, which we had been planning for a whole and in a very mad last minute rush, due to a last minute change, we moved to a new rented London flat, which unfortunately does not have a garden or a balcony, as I had hoped.



During the move, I had to get rid of all the vegetable plants, which included the last of the Tomatoes, Chilies and Courgettes; luckily it was coming to…

We had lovely weather over the past weekend, very warm and humid but great for all the vegetables which seem to blossom and enjoy the splash of heat that's finally arrived. I had a little nosey around the vegetables to see how everything was doing and I notices one long Courgette as least 6cm in size and then another four just starting to form behind this.



I'm really really excited as last year it was very disappointing, due to only getting one Courgette from four plants, so I'm…

After leaving the Onions to dry out in the small greenhouse over the last few weeks, last weekend I finally got around to trying out how to plait these, now I've never done this before, as this is my first batch of Onions, but I thought plaiting them would be better than just storing them in a bag.



Having consulted my garden books, it looked like plaiting was the best way to store them, but they didn't explain how, so off I went to the internet, as always this is a great place to…

Sunday was a beautiful day, so I took the opportunity to re-pot some of the vegetables I have on the windowsill at home. Most of these had now grown to a good handling size, so they were easy to transport to their new pots. Soil wise, as I still have a whole bag of the Grow Your Own Vegetable Compost, which contains 6 months of feed, I mixed this with some of the water crystals I have and filled up the 20cm pots I bought last year with the mixture.



For the Tomato varieties,…

Last year my boyfriend Zac bought some Garlic plants that had already been started off, at the local garden centre. I planted them in one of the large pots, but they never seemed to do anything. Eventually they all died off except one, which just wouldn't give up.

This ended up in a pot on its own and left over winter and a couple of weeks ago it started to look a little bit straggly, so I took the bulb out to dry out and this is what I was left with.…

My garlic is looking really healthy this year; I planted my garlic last November so was in the ground when we had the cold snap in the beginning of February.

Read more..............…

Over the recent snowy weekend, I started to sow my first batch of seeds of the year, which I always start at this time of the year (mid February). Having already sorted through all the seeds I've managed to collect, earlier in the month, I then got to prepping for this years vegetable sowing.…

Last year I grew a lot of Tomatoes, so I decided to create some Tomato Passata. I've never done this before, so after some research on the internet, including watching a few cooking demo videos,  I decided to use the recipe from the book 'Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No2', which I'd recently bought.



This Roasted Tomato Passata recipe makes 2x 500ml Jars:



2kg Ripe…

One of my first planned jobs for the 2012 balcony garden, which I've been doing over the last two weeks, has been to create a list of all the seeds I've been collecting. These have either been bought or have come free in garden magazines.



I've collated them all into a handy excel growing chart (this does look better in excel), along with the last year of sowing, best sowing and planning out months and when to harvest, see chart below:…

As my seed collection has been growing and growing over the last year, I've been keeping these in a small plastic box along with other useful garden impliments, such as string, veg labels etc. So I've been considering buying a new seed box, now I did add this to my Christmas list, but it didn't seem to make it under the tree.



Since then I've had a quick scout around on a few of my favorite gardening sites and they all seemed a little steap in price, even in the sales. But…