Growing

In spite of the weather having slipped back from Spring to Autumn plants are still growing.

Outside the greenhouse a couple of troughs of Dwarf French Beans 'Slenderette' are starting to poke through.  I grew some of these last year and they gave a lovely heavy crop:



Also outside, but not photographed is a trough of spring onions.

Inside the greenhouse.
My tomato plants in their auto watering pots.
Alicante and Moneymaker:



Two troughs of 'Vibrant' strawberry plants.
Grew these last year. Lovely jubbly:

 

Some sweet peas of mixed colour:



Finally a couple of hanging baskets.
Bush Fuchsia 'Hermiana' and mixed trailing Lobelia:

Can't Beat Home Grown

For the first time I have been growing some early (Vibrant) strawberries in planters in the greenhouse.
Lovely jubbly:

Growing

There are quite a few large frog tadpoles swimming round the garden pond:



My one and only large strawberry plant grown from seed continues to develop:



Early strawberry plants (Vibrant), bought bare root and listed as fruiting next year, are producing flowers for this year:



A couple of Outdoor Girl tomato plants in an automatic watering system are now showing their first flower buds:

Just One

It's about five weeks since I planted the seeds which I hoped would become giant strawberry plants. So far just one has shown signs of life:



Now it's a question of nurturing it to full size and waiting for some runners to produce more plants.

I think I mentioned previously that my wooden lean-to shed was rapidly rotting. I had ordered a plastic shed to replace it. That arrived unannounced yesterday morning so I spent the day demolishing the old and erecting the new:



Astounding what can be achieved with a lump hammer and a wrecking bar!
Plenty of clearing and tidying up left to do once the old joints stop aching a bit.

During the demolition process a movement caught my eye:



One of the garden frogs decided it would be safer to move further away from the action.

Hoping for Big Things

I spotted some seeds of giant strawberries for sale so I thought I would give them a try. The seeds spent about 3 weeks in the freezer, as per the instructions, and are now sown in pots on the kitchen windowsill. Now it is a waiting game to see whether they start growing as, apparently, they are not an easy plant to get started. The seeds are tiny as can bee seen with the two I found still in their plastic bag, now planted with the others:



The 5p coin is about 19mm across.

I wonder whether this is a similar variety to the Spanish strawberries available in shops at the moment.

A Strawberry and a Half

I hasten to say I did not grow this. My crop has been a miserable failure this year. This came in a tub of strawberries delivered by Asda this morning. The pot contained a mixture of what I would call traditional sizes and large sizes. This being the largest of the 'monsters'. About 50mm across at its widest.



I assumed it was a mixture of two different varieties though the pot was only  labelled with one variety name - Portola. I haven't seen such large ones from a British producer before.  They were from Vicarage Nurseries, Worcestershire. All those I have eaten were tasty and well textured, unlike some foreign imports I had earlier in the year which were tasteless and hard enough to hammer in nails.