Life is like an onion...

"Gardening is cheaper than therapy, and you get tomatoes" ...although gardening can also drive me nuts because most of the time I don't know what I'm doing! 

So today we have mainly been harvesting! Well, of certain vegetables obviously!  You will be impressed that to accompany our roast lamb I dug or cut the following fresh from the garden:

• potatoes
• runner beans
• French beans
• mint - for sauce

However, the main task was digging up the onions and shallots, and all advice recommends this is done when all the leaves have fallen over naturally.  They then have to be kept in a hot dry place for a few weeks until the skins are also dry and papery. We will then attempt to plait into ropes (very continental!) or hang in net sacks so the air can circulate freely and they will store (hopefully) for a number of months,

As you can see from the photo (below left) Paul painstakingly 'threaded' the onions through the slats in the greenhouse bench so they have a  optimal drying situation.  Whereas I randomly placed the shallots in a vegetable tray, hoping for the best!
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Greenhouse No, 2 is also looking very healthy - full of those plants which generally originate in the Mediterranean and need constant warmth and a lot of water.  This year I am focusing on tomatoes, sweet-peppers, aubergines and basil.    I have grown all of these from seed.  I have never grown aubergines before and today was gratified to spy a very attractive mauve flower emerging from a few of the plants, so that is optimistic.  Similarly the peppers are beginning to flower, and the tomatoes are ripening too.  So everything is on track - and fortunately have not suffered any adverse reaction to the intense heat experienced earlier in the week... after all, if it was 34 degrees outside, I dread to think what the temperature was inside the greenhouse?!

Lore and Wisdom:

​Onion’s skin very thin,
Mild winter coming in;
Onion’s skin thick and tough,
Coming winter cold and rough.

"Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep".

Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967) - American poet.
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