More carrots!

I thought that I would see how the Nantes carrots are doing... wow!
In contrast to the Amsterdam (see previous post) they seem to have gone for width more than length. Although actually they are not short either!

The biggest one is 17cm long and over 4cm diameter.

It is still amazingly warm every day with temperatures over 15°C, dropping to 10°C at night. There have been heavy rain showers some days, but not much wind so the carrot grass is still standing and I have high hopes for the parsips :-)

The currants did not do very well. In particular the black currants were pathetic... 40g off one bush! And even the red currants are well under a kilo. They must need feeding and watering better.

The gooseberry bush has produced quite well but apart from a few picked yesterday to eat with some mackerel, I have not picked them yet.

Verslunarmannahelgi!

This weekend is what used to be called August Bank Holiday Weekend in England. The first Monday in august is a holiday for most people. Here in Reykjavik it often means the end of the summer season; the nights are getting darker and the garden slows right down.

A couple of days ago I pulled an onion so that I could use it for dinner. Today I decided to pull them all as I doubt if they will grow much more now. Some of the leaves had died back and all of them had fallen over so it is unlikley that the bulbs would get much bigger.

In all I got about 1kg of onions from a total of 64 onions - not a great yield but probably the biggest onions I have managed here. To be honest, I think I planted the sets too deeply. I followed the instructions on the packet and it said to put a full bulb deep i.e. top of onion buried about a cm. Previously I have put them with the tip of the bulb just covered and I think that is a better method. I think these ones were too deep and stayed too damp around the bulb. None of the bulb was exposed when I harvested them.

About half a dozen went straight in the compost bin as they had neck end rot. The rest are in a seed tray and I'll let they dry out a bit before bringing them in to store. The largest onions were about 5cm in diameter.

Here is a photo of the total crop, and one of an onion with neck end rot. You can just make out some little white insects which are in there too :-(















On a brighter note : the broccoli is still shooting away and the strawberry plants are putting out runners which I plan on rooting to make more plants for next year.

The runner beans have been flowering like crazy now for a month, but not a single bean to show for it. I read on the internet that at best only about 50% of flowers set, and that bees do the pollinating. There are plenty of bees in the snapdragons which I have in the front garden, but nota single one in the beans. Then I heard on Gardeners' Question Time that it is possible to spray with sugar solution - this attracts wasps and flies which pollinated the beans while they get the sugar. So, I mixed up some honey and water, and spalshed it around on the beans. It certainly attracts the wasps and flies, have to wait and see if any beans set now. I doubt if they will mature so late but if they set then at least I may decide to try runner beans again next year - if not, then I think I'll just have broad beans as they do set OK.

Dinner from the garden!

Really could not wait any longer to see if the potatoes had grown!

Now, I had 4 squares of potatoes, 3 were some French salad potatoes and 1 contained Icelandic red potatoes. Today I felt around in one of the French squares and found no French spuds but some Icelandic ones seemed to have encroached into that square. So, I grubbed out six potatoes for dinner. Not bad! The French ones may be deeper, I'll have to look into that.


I pulled up 4 carrots too, all Amsterdam Sprint. They were great, very sweet and certainly long enough.

Belated update

Here are pictures taken on July 12th, when I returned from holiday. It all looked fine and my daughter did a good job looking after it :-)















And today I pulled up some carrots to see how they are doing. The one on the left is a bit twisted and is Amsterdam 3 Sprint. The other two are Nantes 2. The carrot tops all look healthy enough so I will just let them grow a bit longer I think.

















The broccoli has done very well. I'm not sure about the flavour, it is a bit stronger than the usual calabrese. It does, however, give a steady crop over a longer time I think. We ate some tonight (see picture) and there are more small heads to come.

Two weeks later

Just wanted to update this as a record of how things are growing. The weather has been warm (12°C plus) but grey and some rain showers. There is one spear of broccoli so far - looks rather lonely there and I am keeping an eye on it so I will pick it before it flowers. Hope that more come then.

All over!

Slight exaggeration there :-)

We have had quite a lot of spinach and beetroot leaves over the last couple of weeks. I am really happy with both of those. The spinach had begun to flower so I picked the last lot of leaves two days ago, and today I pulled up the plants and sowed more seeds.

I also cut the beetroot leaves off and brought them in for a last crop. Then I pulled those out too and sowed more "mixed salad". Last time only the beetroot came up (although there are now tiny seedlings of what might be celery leaves)so it will be interesting to see what happens now it is a bit warmer.

I also put in a pre-sown disc of coriander; there should be time for that to come up.

Everything else is doing pretty well. I've been keeping it all covered over but I think I'll start leaving the covers off during the day unless we get bad weather. One of the broccoli plants has a tiny head forming so perhaps not long until there is something to pick there.

First salad of the summer!

Yum yum!
Spinach, beetroot leaves, chives, melissa and thyme (going to put some of the herbs in an omelette).