Tomatoes and thyme

Well a week after being planted the tomatoes and thyme were starting to peek through. Pretty pleased that so many of the thyme seeds had germinated as I'd heard that thyme was hard to grow from seeds. Time will tell whether I manage to keep them alive and get thyme plants going from them...

Yellow tomatoes

Lots of mini thyme seedlings

First seeds of 2013

So I've sowed my first seeds of 2013. This year I've been doing quite a bit of reading about gardening in general and what I should be doing when. I'm trying very hard not to get too excited about all the new found space we have and keep things relatively simple and so for this year we have decided not to do too much with the main portion of the garden and keep all of our vegetable growing within hanging baskets and pots on the patio. This should mean we're able to have a lot more growing space than we have done in previous years but will hopefully not be such a big step up that we're overwhelmed by everything we have to do and have too much to learn.

Cocktail stick labels for my seedlings ready to go

Therefore, again with the seeds for this year we've stuck with only buying ones which are recommended for containers although we have allowed ourselves some bigger crops (such as sweetcorn, courgette and squash!) than we've previously had on the windowsill. I'm also keen to get a herb garden established so we've bought a selection of herb seeds.

First set of seeds planted and labelled up with sowing date

Last Monday I set about sowing the first set. In my reading I'd seen that it is recommended that rather than sow all of your seeds at once you sow over successive weeks to spread out your harvest better throughout the year and so taking this into account I started with just sowing a couple of each of the seeds. I still had some seeds left over from last year (aubergines, caldero chillies, a packet of Wahaca chilli seeds that I'd picked up at some point along the way) so I shoved them in some seed compost to see if they'll do anything and then I started to plant up a few of the seeds that I've bought for this year so planted some red and yellow tumbling tomatoes, chervil, rosemary and thyme. I've read that it's really hard to get rosemary and thyme to germinate so fingers crossed!

Thyme seeds planted - fingers crossed they germinate!

We also no longer have our lovely dining table sitting in a south facing window just perfect for germinating seeds that we had in the flat so I've resorted to using the bed in the spare room having protected the mattress with a dust sheet and put a couple of spare table tops on top of it. The window is west facing which is the best I can do so we'll see how it goes...

Using the bed in the spare room as a surface for seedlings!

We did get aubergines...

Hmm... it appears again that, as in 2011, I managed to start the year with the greatest of intentions in 2012, blogging a few times and then life got in the way and I didn't manage to keep it up. We didn't give up on the windowsill though and did indeed get aubergines! In fact, the aubergines were our most successful windowsill crop last year - whilst we got some tomatoes and chillies, they didn't fare so well with the relentless rain that we had. Here's the 2012 highlights:

Seedlings getting bigger

Plants go out onto the windowsill

Some windmills add colour

We had a wildflower windowsill alongside our veggies

Pea flower

More wildflowers

Beans!

Aubergine flower

First bean harvest

Aubergine getting bigger

First aubergine harvested

Yellow tomatoes in the rain

Sunflowers in the rain (these self-seeded from the seeds the birds dropped out of the windowsill feeder)

Great tit in the windowsill feeder

Chilli and bean harvest

So here I am again, in 2013, starting the blog up again with the greatest of intentions. Fingers crossed I'll find the time to keep it going this year!

Seeds!

I have just ordered my seeds for the 2012 windowboxes. I am slightly later this year than I have been for the past two but hoping that this won't cause any problems... As some of you will be aware one of my "30 before 30" for this year is to grow an aubergine on the windowsill. This may be a tall order but I'm hoping that I'll be able to do it. The variety that I have gone for is the dwarf "Ophelia" plant. Fingers crossed they like sunny spots and will thrive on the windowsill. Only time will tell. To go alongside the aubergines I've gone for another newby to the windowsill - the dwarf runner bean "Hestia" and last but not least I have the old favourites which have done very well both years - tumbling tomatoes and some chilli seeds (another new variety of chilli this year - going to try Caldero).

Now just got to sit back and wait for them to arrive in the post!

January tomatoes

The window boxes did become casualties of all of the activity surrounding the wedding and honeymoon in the latter half of 2011 and as such got rather left to their own devices for the last quarter of the year.

However, one of the upsides of this is that with the mild winter all of the green tomatoes that were left on the tomato plants have been gradually turning red throughout December and January and every week or so we get another 15-20 red tomatoes to put into our dinner. My new favourite cookbook is Plenty by Yottam Ottolenghi and I used this lot in his Lentil and Aubergine recipe.

Very tasty indeed!

2011 highlights

So... whilst the blog didn't get written in 2011 we did try our hardest to keep the windowsill alive and kicking. Here's a few picture highlights from the year - more stories to come over the coming weeks...

Sunflowers and tomatoes!

As the title of the post suggests as of today we have sunflowers and tomatoes! Nine of the sunflower plants have come through and we have seven little tomato plants so far. So exciting to see the first signs of life!

The first seeds of 2011 are in!

So... I've planted up the first seeds of 2011. Last year we planted all the seeds at once but this year I've decided that I'm going to go for a more staggered approach in an attempt to not end up with quite such madness in terms of hundreds of plants that all need attention simultaneously. But we'll see how that goes!



As chillies are the trickiest to get to germinate without a propagator I've put lots of chilli seeds in so that I've got time for a second and third go at them if this time is unsuccessful and I've also put in some tomatoes and some sunflowers that were left over seeds from last year. Hopefully they're not too old to germinate - I guess it's wait and see time now!

The last of the red tomatoes...

I decided to use up the last of the red tomatoes yesterday in a Jamie Oliver sausage and tomato bake for a hearty late lunch. This is an old favourite of ours but to make it into a one-pot wonder we add Charlotte potatoes that have just been sliced in half into the mix. It's so easy - you just throw it all into the roasting tin, whack it in the oven and give it a stir a few times and out comes a delicious meal! Yesterday I also added in a few sprigs of our fresh windowsill oregano too. And the best thing is, we had quite a bit of the gorgeous tomatoey, balsamicy sauce left over which is going to go great with some penne for today's lunch, finished off with some gratings of parmesan and more fresh oregano leaves over the top.

Disillusioned

As a novice gardener in her first year of gardening I was becoming a bit disillusioned - the excitement of the spring and summer when new things seemed to be happening every day had passed and the plants just seemed to be on a slow decline to death. I'd been walking past them and rather than getting the joy of earlier months I was getting a sinking feeling as they just started to look more and more dead every day.




But the other day I decided to pick myself up and have a proper look at them all and look for the positives - we had lots of bright red chillies and tomatoes just waiting to be picked and the oregano still seems to be coming on great guns.









We also had no food in the house for dinner and had just got back from a trip away so the fact that we had these bright juicy fat red chillies and tomatoes just crying out to be picked was a great little present. So I heated up the hob and chucked four of the chillies in the pan to blacken them all over. Then in went the tomatoes along with some chopped spring onions, garlic and the finely chopped stalks of a bunch of parsley that I found lying around in the fridge. Meanwhile I got a big pot of boiling water on the go to cook some pasta in. Once all of the veggies had fried down a bit I bashed up the chillies, added a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tin of drained chickpeas and left it all to simmer away while the pasta cooked. Once the pasta was done I added a ladelful of the pasta water to the sauce, chucked the pasta in and stirred it around along with the chopped parsley leaves and salt and pepper to taste. A perfect meal inspired by the windowsill and the store cupboard!

Green tomatoes, brown patches

Over the past few days I've noticed that some of the green tomatoes have developed small brown patches. From googling the phenomena the only thing that I've been able to find is that they might have late blight, although all of the photos of tomatoes with late blight on the internet look a little different to the patches on my tomatoes. Has anyone got any advice about what has happened to my tomatoes and what I should be doing about it?

Cherry tomatoes on the table

Well last night we used up all of our cherry tomatoes that were currently red. Unfortunately one of the problems with the windowsill is that whilst everything is very tasty and it is hugely satisfying to have grown this veg ourselves, quantity-wise we are always a little lacking in having enough of anything for a whole meal. So last night we had around ten of our homegrown tomatoes but they had to be supplemented from some shop bought ones (you can see the difference between our smaller, more misshapen but brighter red tomatoes versus the uniform shop bought ones).

We cooked them in a nice simple pasta dish that is easy to whack on and cook when you get home from work. While the pasta is cooking you put the cherry tomatoes in a pan and heat them up with a glass of white wine. When it starts to simmer nicely put in a good dollop of creme fraiche and leave it all simmering away. Then once the pasta is cooked drain it and then pour your sauce over it and at the last minute stir through a good handful of rocket (such a shame our windowsill grown rocket never took off as otherwise it could have been a windowsill grown produce bonanza). Serve with shaved parmesan and lots of black pepper on top.

In desperate need of some tlc!

Our poor little windowsill plants have been rather neglected over the past month or so as general life has taken over and all got a bit hectic. This has led to some pretty dead looking plants as can be seen from the picture below. So today I have spent a few hours now giving them some much needed tlc and chopping away a lot of unneeded foliage in a bid to try and put a bit of life back into them.



The ones that went for a tumble unfortunately didn't get moved back out on the windowsill from the fireplace until just now and leaving them in the fireplace has made them go a bit crazy and grow all over the place. They had grown so many new leaves that they were all starting to die on the inside and some of the tomato plants needed major chopping back pretty much right to the stem. And when I started to chop heavily back I also found some pretty dead oregano plants that had been completely smothered out.

However there are some little sprigs of hope so fingers crossed it's not too late to save them. I've put the troughs back out onto the windowsill now so we'll have to wait and see whether or not it's now too late in the season for them to regrow and get any tomatoes.









It's not all bad though and we've got some very healthy looking sweet peppers and cherry tomatoes that are almost ready to harvest. Yum!

Flowers on the sickly tomato plants!

Well the poor little tomato plants that I had to completely chop back to pretty much nothing after I put them out on the windowsill and they got battered by the wind have just started to produce flowers! It's great to see how they've sprung back to life after the ordeal. I'm not sure that we'll get massive amounts of fruit off them but I'm pleased to see they recovered.

Tomato plant recovery

The poor little tomato plant that took such a battering in the wind when I first put it outside a few weeks ago seems to be recovering well. It's got loads of new shoots on it now that are doubling in size every day at the minute so it seems to be fighting back.

I'm really hoping that it's going to come back from the brink and actually produce some flowers and fruits!

...reddening tomatoes that used to be green...

When I was little we used to sing a song in school at harvest festival time called Paintbox. I absolutely loved it and it is such a cheerful song about all of the growing fruits and vegetables that it has stayed with me all my life. Anyway, now we have some of the song in action with our first bright red ripe tomatoes. We picked the first three the other day. As there were only three of them there wasn't enough to actually make anything from them so we just sliced them into quarters and munched on them. And they were lovely! The tomatoeiest tomatoes ever!


Yum.