Harvest time

Isn't it amazing when all the effort that you have put into something finally pays off. All of the nurturing, pruning and the watering is all worthwhile when you get this.

Isn't it great! I've just noticed the rather large scary knife in the corner of that photo...you can guess the fate of the tomato a few minutes after this!

It was closely followed by this...

And then this!!

It's been so great seeing some proper harvests come into the kitchen. We have frozen most of the chillies and eaten the tomatoes. There are plenty more ripening though so I plan to make some sun dried tomatoes with the next lot. Well, oven dried - this is England.

This is what it's all about - popping out onto the balcony on a sunny evening to pick some bits to go with tonight's dinner.

I hope everyone else is enjoying some nice homegrown additions to their meals at the moment!

First flowers

There's the very beginnings of some flowers on a lot of my plants, I think over the next week or so I'm going to bore you with lots of pretty pictures. My tomatoes are about 50cm high, and they have started making some buds:

My beans kept growing and growing even past the netting and into the sky. The first one I chopped down is ahead of the rest - it really has put it's energy into the lower leaves. Look what I spotted today:

The top of the chilli plants are looking promising:

And here's the best for last, my first proper flower on the jalapeno plant :)

Chillies

My lovely friend Katie (who happens to live on the most amazing farm) has very kindly given me two chilli plants that she has grown from seeds. One is jalapeno and the other is anaheim. I know nothing about chillies so I've been doing some research on Wikipedia and it looks like jalapeno is quite a hot variety whereas anaheim is milder. My b/f is happy - he loves chillies and wanted me to grow some anyway. I, on the other hand, am a complete wimp and hate anything spicy. So it looks like this chilli combination will suit us well! I am going to keep them inside until the weather is a bit warmer, but I'm excited to see what these plants do, especially what size and colour the chillies will be and what we might cook with them. I'll keep you posted!

How can something so HOT come from something so cute?