Friday 9 July 2010

First tomatoes!

We’ve been watching several of our Languedocienne tomatoes turning red and ripening over the past few days and today we picked the first four.  What a treat it was to have a salad for lunch made with tomatoes, basil and garlic from the garden and arbequine olive oil from the Moulin du Mas St Pierre which we bought when we visited in April.

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A cicada case and rampant pumpkin plants

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When cicadas hatch out they crawl up onto a high plant or branch and emerge from these casings.  Lo Jardinièr found one today.  By the time he’d fetched the camera the cicada had flown off, but the casing was left.  Our pumpkin plants are making a bid to take over the whole garden – compare this with the extent of the plants only eleven days ago!  We’ve been watering the garden ever other day (economising a bit on other years when we’ve watered every day, and the plants still seem to be getting enough), and during two days in between waterings earlier this week the plants had completely covered the hosepipe, growing about half a metre.  We’re hoping to have some nice big pumpkins in the autumn, and the butternut squash plants seem to have settled in well too.

6 comments:

Jan said...

I didn't know cicadas did that. Lucky you with the tomatoes, I think I might miss our first ones while I'm away.

mo said...

A tomato salad with crusty bread to mop up the dressing has to be the best summer lunch EVER!

Ewa said...

I think your pumpkin has tropled at least :)

Lisa said...

When we were kids, we used to make a game of sticking cicada shells on each others' shirts. You had to sneak them onto your neighbor's clothes, when they weren't paying attention.

Laura said...

Beautiful tomatoes! Ours are just starting to get a bit of blush on them, but we are going on vacation soon - I hope we don't miss them all!

We also had some overly vigorous pumpkin plants last year that took over the entire side garden!

Weeping Sore said...

Ok, you win with the first tomatoes. All I can get is green ones at the Veggie Garden - not enough heat, we think. I'm roasting early tomatoes from the local farmer's market, not yet having enough to bother with roasting. We did manage our first big tomato: followed by the ceremony of making the first BLT sandwiches of the season.