Wednesday 27 February 2013

First apples of the season

Galas. Super juicy, sweet and crisp. Absolutely delicious.

This year's crop is just great. Hardly any blemishes. Good size. And quite a few off the tree. The rain moved in, so we had to stop picking. So, two great things at the same time - apples and rain. (It's been an incredibly dry summer, so rain is an exciting and very rare event at the moment.)
Excuse me, I have to go and eat another apple! :)

Sunday 17 February 2013

Eggplant 'Tsakonikis'

This is a Greek heirloom eggplant.
It's the first time I am growing this. It's a fairly early eggplant, and you can see this even at our place! I don't usually have such big fruit on our plants at this time of summer. I will let it grow a little big bigger, then harvest it. It'll be interesting to cook with it. Can't wait! :)

Friday 15 February 2013

Thank you, Mr. Fothergill's!

This parcel arrived out of the blue! And what a lovely selection of seeds it is. Grasses, vegetables and flowers. Some of them as a seed tape.
I had experimented with Mr. Fothergill's selection last Winter and Spring. There are quite a few pictures, too. (On the computer.) As you may have noticed, they and the write-up did not make it on to the blog. Life (and work) got in the way.
I absolutely loved the Tomato cup (just add water). The germination was fantastic, and the seedlings were extremely healthy. I did transplant them on to bigger pots, as the cup is too small to grow this little tomato plant in there for the whole season. The tomatoes are very tasty!

The seed tapes with the radishes rocked! Easy to put on the ground, cover and water. Lovely radishes they were, too!

The carrots were a winner, too. So far, the seeds I have received, have done well. Good germination, then healthy plants.

Thanks again to the good folks at Mr. Fothergill's! I'll try to write a bit more about their seeds and products throughout the season. :)

Thursday 7 February 2013

Honey

Our very first honey. We are very excited. I have taken heaps of pictures of the whole process - from taking frames out of the hives, the extractor, etc. But a lack of time has seen me only choose 2 pictures.

Here is the honey flowing through the honey gate of the extractor into another bucket. We are only filtering it roughly via an ordinary kitchen sieve.
And here we have our very first honey, filled into jars. It's the best ever honey. Obviously. ;)