The Final Tomatoes

Our harvest is now coming to an end and with perfect timing as we prepare to move out of our city centre apartment to a place with a small *outdoor* garden across the Mersey.

These Tiger tomatoes are very ripe with a pale stripe and taste delicious.

We are also finishing off the aubergines and peppers. Hopefully the rosemary plant will continue to flourish in our new place.

Small Aubergines Stubbornly Refuse to Ripen

We have about 25 of these small stripey Aubergines (or eggplants, some really do look like eggs).

They haven't altered much for a few weeks, some have changed colour a bit but they're still very hard.

I believe they should be ready late Summer and the skins are shiny so maybe we should try some.

First Stripey Aubergine Appears

Some while after the lovely Aubergine (Eggplant) flowers appeared the stripey fruits are slowly emerging.

I hadn't noticed before just how sharp those small needles are on the enveloping leaves. Obviously there to protect the young fruit from predatory birds etc.

These plants do attract greenfly but otherwise seem to be quite trouble free (so far).

First Aubergine Flower

The joy of waking up in the morning to see another new flower has popped.

I'm not sure I've ever seen an Aubergine flower before and whoever designed them should win an award because they're amazing. Have a look at the detail photo below.

We have six plants all with several buds. These are the small round Aubergines so the plants and the desktop should be able to bear the weight.

Tomatoes and Peppers are still going strong too.

Aubergine Plants Good - Shame About the Radishes

Sad to report that our Radish seedlings failed. You may recall they were the 20 day Nelson Radish, they did germinate well and grow into small plants but then stopped and gradually withered away. Maybe we're being a bit too ambitious attempting to grow root vegetables indoors. 

But the Aubergines (pictured here) are looking good, they have nice soft, almost furry, leaves. Its a small round variety which, hopefully, will not take up too much space.

Our First Seed Swap

Speaking of Aubergine, here's a photo of the packet. 'Ideal for the patio', it says. That's not much different from a desk is it? We had more seeds than we could possibly use so we swapped some with our friend, Joanne along with some mixed leaf salad seeds. 

She has a proper outdoor garden and had kindly sent us seeds for Purple Haze Carrots, Tomato Tigerella (the stripey ones), Japanese Spring Onion and Padron Peppers (noted for their 'Russian Roulette' effect as about one in 50 is very hot but you can't tell until you eat it. That should be fun!)

Looks like we'll have all the ingredients for a Jamie Oliver style salad soon. Lovely Jubbly.

Joanne warned on the envelope that seeds can easily escape and as you can see one of the little spring onion chaps did manage to free itself from the pack.

Looking forward to more swapping of seeds and maybe even plants in the future. This is fun.

Little Aubergines

All the Aubergine seeds have sprouted. They are the small pale coloured variety - Aubergine Calliope F1 Hybrid 

The little creature looking after them is from Japan where aubergines are very popular indeed. He is a small replica of 'Dog Shaped Flower Pot'  by Taro Okamoto one of our favourite artists, we visited his Museum in 2011.

Some Help Arrives for the Gardening

As if by magic, some little creatures turned up in various plant pots!

Seems that even in horticulture there's no escaping the Japanese Kawaii Culture.

Today we sowed a few Aubergine seeds - yes Aubergine! Can't resist it but no idea how we'll find space for them.