I’ve been working on a surprise for you. It has to do with one of my garden projects. But, it’s been kept back as I need material to be delivered from the hardware centre. Honestly, I thought I would have been done with this a month ago, but there we go….. The delivery is supposed to come today or tomorrow, so fingers crossed. I’ll keep the secret a little longer so that I can still hopefully unveil the surprise with a big ‘taa-daah!’.
I do have other late summer news though!
I harvested the potato crop! As you may recall the veg crops this year were not planned. But, during lockdown with the swing of life being uncertain, and grocery shopping becoming tedious, the supply of potatoes for the Hubs’ meals was a major point to think about! Even though I’m gradually getting him to eat more plant-based meals, I still can’t convince him that green things are good for him. So, aside from the fish dinners and various pea-based soups, he is still very much a meat-and-potatoes lad. Hence the panic about potatoes.
Don’t gasp and stare at me in horror when I say that I’m not a lover of potatoes. I just find them boring lumps of stodge. But, as happened some years ago when I discovered how much better carrots grown at home and freshly dug for a meal tasted, let me utterly confirm that home-grown potatoes – cooked fresh from harvest – taste amazing.
Our home-grown potatoes are gorgeous things to eat, sweet and light. And they don’t take long to cook either. We grew Red Duke of York First Earlies. Yummy yummy!
I also harvested my little crop of blackcurrants. I’ve been having them at breakfast with my oatmeal. They’re tart and fresh tasting, but like blueberries once they’re heated for a bit they get somewhat sweeter. They’re definitely a good thing to have to give you some energy in the morning!
Do you remember the Aster seeds I planted this spring? Well they’ve started blooming. As they are a late summer flower, you do have to wait quite a while for them to show their beauty, unlike the many other flowering seeds that I sowed this spring. You’ve already seen pictures of my white candytuft, nasturtiums, calendulas…. So here’s the Aster.
Some other cute flowers bloomed – see this is the oh so satisfying result of sowing seeds! Do you remember the Salvia, California Poppy and Sunflower seeds that I sowed earlier?
The other flower I look forward to every late summer is my Gloxina. It’s a relative of the African violet so has the fuzzy petals on the flower. They’re so blousy and vibrant – I just love them!
I think I was a bit over zealous with my aspirations for a last wave of crop planting. I planted some courgette seeds and more carrot seeds some weeks ago and just last week I planted both sets of seedlings out into crop beds. Hopefully no sheep break through the fencing to eat them! Ha, let’s take a step back and just hope that they were sown in time to grow to harvest stage – in this part of Scotland our growing season is a bit reduced as we get colder a bit faster than the more southerly regions of the UK.
Anyway, here’s hoping. I’ll keep you posted. Promise!
