How to save tomato seeds

I think it's a great idea to save your own tomato seeds. I was keen on saving the seeds from the heirloom varieties I had grown on the allotment. I gave it a try and it was easy. Here's how it's done:

• You will need a glass jar, some cling film (plastic wrap), a few tablespoons of water and a plate lined with kitchen towel
• Choose a tomato from the healthiest tomato plant
• Cut the tomato in half 
• Scoop or squeeze out the gelatinous inner into the glass jar
• Add a few tablespoons of water into the jar
• Cover the top of the jar with cling film (plastic wrap)
• Pierce the cling film (plastic wrap)  to allow a little air into the jar to help with fermentation 
• Place the jar onto a sunny windowsill or ontop of the refrigerator to keep the contents warm
• Leave for about three days, making sure you give the contents a stir daily
• You will notice the top of the water looking scummy, this is okay as it means fermentation is taking place and the gel is separating from the seeds
• After three days remove the scummy top off the water with a spoon
• Then pour the remaining contents into a fine sieve and rinse thoroughly until you are left with clean seeds
• Cover a plate with a piece of kitchen towel and place the seeds ontop 
• Make sure the seeds are not clumped up and are laying separately from each other
• Leave the seeds to dry, this can take up to a week
• Only when you are sure the seeds are thoroughly dry can you store them
• A way to tell if the seeds are bone dry is to flick them gently across the plate. If they are bone dry they will move quickly and easily and will not stick to each other
• If you store the seeds when they are still damp they will get ruined by mildew
• So once they are bone dry store them in a paper envelope that has been labelled with the variety of tomato and date of storage

I have managed to get the seeds from my Black Russian and Tigerella tomatoes using this method. Good luck with giving it a go yourselves :)

A quick solution to a leaking shed roof!

All the rain we have been having in the UK has been causing havoc in my shed! In the early summer I knew I would have to fix the shed roof due to the felt disintegrating. From inside the shed you could actually see daylight!

I had ordered some waterproof tarpaulin online for only £7.00 and was waiting for a dry day to do the repair. Eventually the day came and I borrowed some stepladders and climbed ontop of the roof to see the damage:

As you can see a big piece of felt was missing! I pulled the tarpaulin over the roof and secured it with wood and nails. It was a quick and cheap fix to see the shed through the winter. Next year I will hopefully re-felt the roof. I do still need to nail some wood along the edges of the shed roof to prevent a gust of wind getting under the tarpaulin and ripping it off. Here is the end result: (also look who came to visit us that day!)

Pickled Beetroot Recipe

Pickled Beetroot Recipe

Ingredients:

• Beetroot
• Malt Vinegar
• Water

Method:

1. Cut the stalks from the beetroot, but not too low. You don't want to cut the actual beetroot as you will lose the beetroots colour when cooking.
2. Wash the beetroots carefully without scratching the skin.
3. Put the beetroots in a large pan of water making sure the beetroots are covered by the water, and cook gently until tender.
4. Leave the beetroot to cool. Once cool rub off the skins and cut off the remaining stalks.
5. Cut the beetroot to your preference. I chose to slice mine as they were quite large.
6. Boil the malt vinegar then leave to cool.
7. Put the beetroot slices into a sterilised glass jar.
8. Once the malt vinegar has cooled pour it into the jar covering all of the beetroot and seal with the lid.
9. Label and date the jar.

Notes:

You can use another vinegar of your preference and add sugar and pepper if you wish to do so. Boiling the vinegar prolongs the life of your beetroot. 

How to ripen and store pumpkins after harvest

I recently harvested my pumpkins and I wanted to know how to store them until Halloween. I researched what I needed to do and thought I'd share my findings here. So after harvesting pumpkins the first thing to do is to allow them to ripen and harden their skin. This is done by leaving them in full sun for about two weeks. Straight away I had a problem as there has been constant rain nearly everyday recently. They can be left under glass to help the process although I haven't got any at the allotment. I ended up leaving them at the allotment on a pile of straw and hoped for the best. As it happens they did ripen okay...amazingly! You will know if they have ripened and hardened off by tapping them. Once the pumpkin sounds hard upon tapping they are ready to store. Apparently pumpkins can be stored for several months in a dry, cool, well ventilated location. Mine are currently on my armchair as I live in a flat without much storage. The armchair is next to an open window so it meets the conditions for storage. I would have stored them in my shed but the shed isn't dry due to leaks and I have a feeling there is a sneaky little mouse living in there! Do mice eat pumpkins? I don't know but I don't want to take the chance. Here is a photo of my pumpkin harvest:

Save the Bees

There has been an advert on the TV recently about Saving the Bees. I am looking into ways in which I can do my bit to help. As it happens I have already done something to Save the Bees by planting flowers on my allotment, such as Lavender and Poppies. The fact I refuse to use bee-harming pesticides also has helped them. I would like to do more such as making a bee hotel!
Here are some photos showing you some of the flowers I have on the plot:

There is a garden that backs onto the allotment site that has three bee hives, I get to see the honeybees when I walk past. It's fascinating to watch them busying themselves! There are large Lavender plants at the entrance to the site that were covered in all types of bees in July. 

Here is a photo of a Bumblebee on the sweet-peas:

                                               
If you would like information about Saving our bees go to www.saveourbees.org.uk , I found them very helpful.

Shallot harvest and heirloom tomatoes

I will grow shallots again next year as I am really pleased with how well they have done. As I've said before I really didn't know much about growing vegetables when I took on the plot, I wanted to learn as I went along. So I had no idea how shallots grew when I planted the shallot sets, I didn't know that from one bulb many shallots would grow! I thought they were the same as onions as in one bulb produces one onion. I liked how pleasant they looked growing in the bed too.  Well the shallots have gone down a treat in my family, I have given many away and have used plenty in my own cooking.

The heirloom tomatoes I got from Copped Hall garden were full of tomatoes. Again I had no idea what to expect as there was Black Russian tomatoes, Tigerella, Bumblebee and Sioux. Each variety looked different. The Black Russians were quite large and were a dark green colour unripened and changed to a dark greeny red when ripe. The Tigerellas were a smaller variety that had stripes and the Bumblebees were small with little points resembling bee stings at the bottom of each fruit. The Sioux tomatoes were a large tomato nearly as large as beef tomatoes you can buy in supermarkets. Here is a photo of a ripened Black Russian tomato.

The Bumblebee tomatoes look very attractive on the tomato plant, here is a photo.

I now realise that tomatoes and cucumber plants are both heavy feeders and they shouldn't really be planted next to each other. But luckily I put plenty of organic chicken manure down and watered them regularly. The picture above shows a baby cucumber growing up the tomato plant. I thought that this was really cute! The last photo is of the Sioux tomato plant.

I sadly didn't take a photo of the Tigerella Tomatoes. It was an oversight of mine. I was too busy tending to everything to realise. At least that's my excuse!!

Sweetpeas, Runnerbeans and the shed sink!

The smell of Sweetpeas is amazing! The seeds that we sowed in spring had finally grew in to beautiful flowers.  The smell of Sweetpeas remind me of my holiday in Grasse South France. On our travels there we went to the Jasmine festival, I can only describe it as magical! Grasse is a town high up on the French Riviera, and once a year they celebrate the plucking of Jasmine. All the winding lanes have lines raised high up that gently spray the scent of Jasmine. I'm not sure why but whenever I smell the Sweetpeas on the allotment I reminisce about Grasse. I wish to go back there one day and would definitely recommend the Jasmine festival to travellers. Anyway back to the allotment! The runnerbeans were growing brilliantly and some were ready to pick. I was told it's best to pick them young as they are more tender. And tender they were!

When we were clearing the rubbish from the shed when we took on our plot we came across an old plastic sink with a draining board. We decided we would fix it up and find a place for it in the shed. We already have a camping stove to make cups of tea and hot chocolate and a sink  made the shed feel more like home. We put a bucket under the plug hole to catch water and even made a tea towel holder!! All I need now is a water canister with a tap that I can hang above the sink! We are lucky to have a plumber on our allotment site who attached a sink to the water mains that provides us with drinking water to fill our kettles up with. I can use that to fill up the water canister when I get it. My daughter made a shelf above the sink to house our cups and washing up liquid.

The pumpkin patch and my new blog header

The end of July and the beginning of August the pumpkin patch looked glorious! I had really left the plants to grow without training them, only trimming the vines if they interfered with other crops. There were four pumpkins growing nicely. When the pumpkins reached the size of  footballs I put beds of straw under them to keep them off the soil. Next time I will use something different as the straw started producing grass which was slightly annoying.
On my allotment site there is a pumpkin competition where everyone tries to grow the largest pumpkin. I didn't enter as my daughter wanted more pumpkins for Halloween, so we didn't trim off all the baby pumpkins when they were growing. Apparently that's what you need to do to produce a huge pumpkin. It makes sense as all the nourishment from the vine only goes into the one pumpkin rather than many. Still I was quite happy with the sizes of the pumpkins  we were growing.

Here is a photo of the pumpkin patch with the sweetcorn  in the background.

Today you might have noticed I have a new header on the blog. My brother created it for me and I am delighted with it. I don't have the creative eye like he does. He is a freelance graphic designer  and here is a link to his website www.gilamonster.co.uk

Second harvest and remodelling the veg bed

Our second harvest came at the beginning of July. By this time all the strawberries had been eaten but we still had an abundance of cherries left! I can say that not one cherry went to waste they were awesome! The beetroot kept coming which I gave away to my family. I left some over for myself to pickle and make some soup with. I picked the remaining good broadbeans and pulled up the plants as the blackfly was really getting bad and they were affecting the beans. The lettuce was starting to go to seed, I decided to pull up the one decent lettuce and I put the rest into the compost bin. I did get plenty of lettuce which my Guinea pig ate most of. Lettuce is her favourite along with cucumber.  We harvested the last of the radishes, they were okay but a little woody.  We picked the two courgettes that were ready, I'm not sure why one had a yellow end though? The spring onions I was delighted with! They were great in potato salad!

Here is a photo of the beetroot pickled at a later date- 

After we pulled up the broadbeans and harvested the onions we started on a project that we had been wanting to do. The project was to divide the large vegetable bed into smaller beds. The reason for this was that as we were tending to plants in the large vegetable bed we had no choice but to tread over the soil to reach them. This compacted the soil. We have clay soil which we have been trying to break up using lots of compost, but we needed to help the soil condition by not treading all it.  After a trip to our local garden centre we picked up some decking boards that were ideal to create smaller beds with. 

We planted some potato tubers in the newly created bed. I'm not sure if we will be lucky enough to get some potatoes at Christmas.

The first harvest and an allotment visitor!

At the end of June we had our first harvest that consisted of strawberries, cherries, broadbeans and beetroot. There were loads of strawberries growing and there seemed to be an endless supply. I wanted to make some strawberry jam but the strawberries got eaten before I got to it! My daughter was eating them like sweets. A more healthy option so I didn't complain! I was eating the cherries straight from the tree, they were so fresh and full of taste and the tree was covered in them luckily as we had netted the tree to protect the fruit from the birds. Although we left the ones at the top of the tree for them. The broadbean plants had produced quite a few broadbeans but they had started being attacked by blackfly. I was hoping some Ecover washing up liquid mixed in the watering can would help, it did a little but the blackfly kept coming back. There were many beetroots establishing on the plot and some were even ready to be pulled from the soil. I used my first beetroot raw in a smoothie. It gave the smoothie a lovely taste although the leaves made it a little bit bitter. Overall I was really happy with our first harvest!

During our days spent at the allotment we had visits from a neighbourhood cat. We named him or her Ginger. Ginger has to be one of the most friendliest cats I have ever met. I'm thinking Ginger is a girl as we can't see any boy bits! So I'm going to call Ginger a she from now on. She follows us even now in September around our plot. Everywhere we go she goes! If I'm watering there she is by my side following my every step. It's so cute! My daughter adores her and spends time just sitting with Ginger  stroking and playing with her. Ginger must know our voices as soon after we arrive at the plot we hear a meow and Ginger comes running up to us.