Our first peanuts!

We had a bit of an experiment with different plants this year.  A friend had bought peanuts for planting last year and we thought we'd give them a try too.  A small box of 32 nuts was €3. 50,  of which 20 germinated and 18 have produced nuts.  Quite difficult to count exactly how many nuts there are, but I reckon they've made about 150 or so.  10 have already started to sprout - maybe last weekends rain got them going - anyway  I've planted them up and will try to over-winter them.  We are leaving the nuts outside in the sun during the day to dry out, and then we'll store them somewhere safe  - and mouse free! - till the spring.

The other success has been sweet potatoes,  did very well and we have 40 cuttings rooting which need lots of looking after during the winter as they don't like cold of any sort, be it a cold wind or just cold air.  The leaves blacken and the plant dies.

And  to round off a good week, the olive trees are laden and we have picked our first olives for 2 years.  These are ready for brining before storing for eating.  Most of our trees have small olives for oil, these are from our neighbour's  trees, they have some of a different variety.  Much smaller trees but much bigger olives.