A Dog with 2 Tails - Thats me! 30.07.08

Welcome back to Reads Retreat, my guide to growing your own veg in Raised Beds. As for todays title, that sums me up to a tee today. Yesterday evening we decided to lift some of the onions from the raised beds. The 1st harvested were this little lot. The variety"Red Karmen" were grown from sets that I purchased on that little shopping site - ebay ! 20 Planted and 20 decent sized and perfectly formed usable little lovelies for the kitchen. The smallest 1 - just bigger than a golf ball, with the majority at about the size of a tennis/cricket ball. A couple have been used already in the kitchen, and they taste superb, maintaining their own inherent flavour right onto the plate. You may think this is nothing special, and you would probably be right. The key thing here for me, is that I've never grown onions before, and now I'm hooked. Its not only the veg that are amazing, but also just how shallow they sit in the soil, yet grow so big. But hold on, there's more:
This lot were also lifted. The variety here is "Stuttgarter Giant", bought from the same ebay shop! Sadly, this little lot failed to live up to their name, producing only about 10 Tennis balls and about 10 golf balls. That said though, they do taste delicious, and are full of flavour. But the best is yet to come: I initially planted sets as I was not confident enough to grow from seed. So, after planting these, i bought some seed to have a go. Fellow bloggers seemed to be selecting the variety"Bedfordshire Champion" so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. And this is the best bit - the BC's are still in the ground, and seem to be outgrowing the onion sets. Again, seeking the advice from fellow allotmenteers, these are still in the raised beds - thanks Steve! It's very tempting to lift these too, but I will wait a couple more weeks.
Don't forget to check out Steve's blog - it's well worth a look. There's a link in my bloggers list.

Elsewhere on the plot, all is well. We had a few French Beans with our dinner tonight, which also included freshly dug new potato's as well as a red onion in the "Toad in the Hole ".

There an abundance of nearly ready crops in the garden, and I'll keep you updated as and when they get harvested. I even bought some Liquid Tom Feed from Wilko's today, and its been used on Toms, Aubergine, French & Runner beans, Pumpkin, Beetroot, Chili Peppers etc etc etc.

I think we're in for some more rain over the next couple of days, so I hope you've been enjoying the weather so far. Thats it for now, but I'll be back soon with more news. Till then,

TTFN.