The first Carrot has been pulled and it’s not much of a feast yet.
I’ll give it a couple more weeks – watch this space!

I’ve recently upgraded my Macs to Adobe Creative Suite 4. It’s a great update to the workhorse package. (Apart from a troublesome upgrade where my serial number was invalid, then valid, then invalid again which left me reinstalling CS3 then CS4 three times!)

One thing that was annoying me in Photoshop CS4 is the compass that appears when using a MacBook trackpad. It’s actually a “Canvas Rotation Tool”.

Thankfully Adobe had created a Photoshop Plug-In to disable this. Go here to download and simply drag into the Photoshop Plug-Ins folder.

UPDATE :::::::

Disable Canvas Rotation in Adobe CS5 too with it’s annoying trackpad Photoshop compass thing

The first flowers have dropped from the potato plants so we decided to dig up two of our twelve plants. I liken the feeling to winning at a summer raffle! In the fork goes and up comes half a dozen spuds.

I planted twelve Estima tubers in late May so they’ve had just over two months growing time. I picked a few courgettes and a few handfuls of french beans too – both of which were grilled on the BBQ later in the day.

I have picked our first red tomato – great! It’s been a steep learning curve on my first year as they have required a lot of attention, here are the things I’ve picked up.

The tomato seeds took the longest to propagate from all my seeds – about 1 month, I then transferred them to a 3″ pots to gather strength and after another 3 weeks I moved them to their final home in three grow bags. It was required to loosely tie them to the canes at several points up the main stem to keep the plant straight. The fruits are now ready to pick 3 months on.

The primary maintenance job is is pick off sideshoots as you see them – the sideshoots appear between the main stem and the main leaf. I missed a couple of sideshoots and now two of my nine plants have double main stems and consequently are not producing as plentiful fruit as the other plants.

The last job is to remove the main stem head once you have four trusses off your stem (a truss is a branch with buds/flowers – these will be your tomatoes). This encourages the plant to stop growing skyward and put it’s energy to ripen it’s fruit. Water with a liquid fertiliser at least once a week, and consistently during the week while being careful not to over water.

This is a Jamie Oliver filling we picked up a while back. Stuff the flowers with a crumbly Ricotta cheese, lemon zest, mint and red chilli filling.

Batter in a flour and wine mix, and deep-fry gently for 2 minutes, once they’re turning golden, remove and drain on kitchen paper.

Serve with a squeeze of lemon. Delicious.

I grew 9 of these from seed and tossed 8 aside in favour for keeping the strongest. The plant kept was given 1 metre square of veg plot but ever since I planted it outside he’s stopped growing, been eaten alive and is now quite tatty. I almost gave up on him living but it looks like the pumpkin fighting back is going to try producing some fruit. Take all your time little plant – you’ve got until the end of October!

The Herbs and Salad trays are growing steadily in the greenhouse.

I’ve stuck 6 herbs into 2 trays and kept the ones that grow better with each other together. In the picture order below – Coriander, Mint and Basil in Tray 1 and Rosemary, Chives and Thyme in Tray 2. Coriander, Mint, Thyme and Chives have been the least fussy, Basil is just hanging in there and Rosemary hasn’t really taken off at all – so far.

Today marked the first harvest of french beans – I have waited for them to be about 3.5-4 inches long before picking.

Courgettes are growing rapidly. Chilli peppers are also coming on strong with two plants providing about 20 fruits.

This series of blog posts is a helpful reminder of my first attempt at ‘growing your own’. What went right, what went wrong and what to try for next year.

To get you upto speed – I have grown everything from seed. Firstly in propagators which gave 108 plants, then moved everything to 3-inch pots. About a month ago I moved everything from the pots into the vegetable patch or growbags/bigger pots in the greenhouse. Spinach, radish, beetroot, carrots and potatoes went directly into the soil. Courgettes, pumpkin, french beans, broad beans, tomatoes, chillis and peppers are split between the veg patch and green house.

Everything has been flowering this last week – lets hope that makes for a good supply of fruit.