Desiree

Look at my pink potatoes! All these came from a tiny patch so I should think I'm going to have many more to dig up. These are my main crop Desiree potatoes, apparently the variety has only existed since 1962 and originates in the Netherlands. Their pink colour looks good against the still a bit damp dark black earth.

The screen on my camera seems to be on the blink (just what I ned before going away) so most of these pictures really were point and shoot. I picked quite a few of the small plum tomatoes but the big beefy ones are still green. After all the rain we've had a lot of the tomatoes have split as well, they don't look too good I think I'll stick to smaller ones next year.

Six kobochas in the shed and there's another one at home, I'll soon be able to start eating them and there are yet more ripening in the pumpkin patch. The marrow is still in the shed, it seems quite happy there but I don't know what I'm going to do with it? I picked another thirty or so courgettes today, I hadn't been to the plot since last Saturday because of all the rain and predictably some of the courgettes were pretty big already. I do hope Nicole manages to pick a few while I'm away.

This is the flower head on the fennel, the plants are about 1metre high, they seem to have enjoyed the rain and having the earth piled around their bases, I'm not sure if I was supposed to let them flower or not, but it's too late now!

The nasturtiums have gone crazy in the last week, they're bushes now rather than little plants. I rather like the flowers in a salad but they are very peppery.

Rain stopped play

Most pictures in my blog have been taken with my phone which is now officially broken. I forgot to take my camera with me when I visited the plot last Saturday so above is old picture I took. When we have photography competitions at work (whatever the subject) someone always sends in a picture of a bee inside a flower, I don't know why? This bee is inside a kobocha flower, I've now picked about half a dozen kobochas and there are probably hale a dozen more yet to swell. Even the 'barren' plant on the end has now got a fruit on it.

I didn't have time to update the blog at the weekend, I would have gone down there again this evening but it's raining, I hope for better weather tomorrow. At least it gives my time for a new post. I picked thirty more courgettes last Saturday so Sunday's lunch was largely courgette based! I thought they were supposed to slow down by now. I was going to give some of them away after lunch but my guest 'forgot' to remind me so I still have a fridge full of them. I have now been able to pick a dozen or so tomatoes and there might be more that are ready although we haven't had much sun, Paul ate the beef tomato that has been in the fruit bowl for the last week or so, he said it was good.

I also built up the earth around the fennel, the picture is from the other week before I did it. I maybe a little late but I only just read that building up the earth keeps the bulb white and give the fennel superior flavour. The bulbs are ready to pick when they're four inches wide, the one above is probably about three inches wide but is one of the wider ones that I have, lets hope they fatten up and the colour fades. The name Marathon in ancient greek means place of fennel as it was supposed to have grown on the battle site. The capital of Madeira, Funchal is also named for the wild fennel that grew there.

What a whopper

My prize winner! I came third in the Fulham palace meadows heaviest marrow competition 2010 with this beast above that weighs 4.26Kg, not only did I get a certificate but also £2 prize money. I was very close to the second prize marrow which was a sort of double marrow but we were both way off the winning vegetable which came in at over 20Kg and needed a wheel barrow to be transported.

You can see the double marrow to the left near the gigantic cabbage, the knobbly thing top right is the winning marrow. The girl who had the winning marrow also had winners in most of the other categories.

Here are my cabbages, I decided to free them from the green net tunnels because they were getting a bit too big. To stop the birds eating the leaves I've pulled the big net over some canes for protection. The plants are all a bit leggy and haven't started to ball up into cabbages yet.

The tomatoes are showing the first blush of ripening, in fact there was a plum tomato that had already turned red so I ate it. They have a wonderful flavour quite unlike the ones in the shops.

One of the beef tomatoes came away from the plant so I'm going to try and ripen it indoors.

Since last week I've picked all the carrots, a few were quite large but most are tiny and there only be one meals worth of them, not my best crop, not sure I'll bother with them next year. i've also picked the last of the french beans another couple of tubs of them, more than I was expecting.

The one that got away

It looks like a courgette but that tiny thing on the right is a courgette with the flower still on the end of it. This monster must be about two foot long, I'm not sure how I missed it before but it seems I did. I've left it growing because it was too heavy to bring back home with me. Next Sunday there's a barbeque at the allotment and I think they have a heaviest vegetable competition, I'll let you know how it goes.

The last of my earlies. There's just over 2kg of spuds which means I got about 6kg from the row, not too much but we haven't finished the ones I picked from last week end yet. All in all about right considering the late frost in May that nearly wiped them out. Despite all the rain we've had today the soil was quite dry just a few inches down, it's raining heavily again now I'm back which will help.

This is the view from inside the shed when it was raining, I sheltered inside and listened to the radio until it let up. I picked another two tubs of french beans once it stopped, there aren't too many left now but that makes it about 3kg from those plants so far, I'll plant more next year as they've been so good. The bird on the stick in the background is a plastic owl, my neighbour has it on his plot, I'm not sure why because it doesn't frighten anything away that I've noticed.

This is the basil plant I grew from seed, I didn't think to take a picture of it until I had harvested some leaves for the second time so it's looking a little sad here. It probably would have been easier to just buy a plant from the supermarket but the seeds were free. According to Culpeppers hebal smelling basil too much will breed scorpions in the brain!

Other things

Here are my nasturtiums, I'm not sure what variety they are because I got the seeds from the freebie table at work and didn't take the accompanying press release. All parts of the nasturtiums are edible but so far I've only tried the flowers, mainly as decoration in a salad. I'm told that seed pods form and you can pickle the seeds and use them instead of capers, sounds like hard work to me.

This fluffy stuff is my row of florence fennel, It seems to be doing really well. The bases of some are beginning to fatten up into bulbs and the the foliage also has an aniseed smell and taste and can be used in cooking. Fennel is one of the main ingredients in Absinthe and is also said to improve eyesight, I'm not sure if the two are related, like beer goggles? The little white sticks to the right of this photo mark out the globe artichokes, these started really well but have stopped at about four leaves each, they grow to about five feet tall and look a little like acanthus before they produce globes, at this rate It'll be ten years or so before I can harvest any.

These are my other tomatoes, more like plum tomatoes, I have a lot of them but they show no signs of turning red, I wonder if I'll ever get to eat any?

The green foliage down the middle of this picture is that of the parsnips, I seem to have a healthy row of them.  You don't pick parsnips until after the first frost, it's said that the cold changes the starch in them into sugar and makes them sweeter, so a little while to go I hope.

The view from the top right hand corner of plot 68. The kobocha plant in the foreground was the smallest when I planted them out and has now spread through the raspberries, although it has many flowers they are all male. The seeds were an F1 hybrid so this isn't suppose to happen. I picked another kobocha today and have left it in the shed, it won't be ready to eat for another six weeks. I also picked over twenty courgettes, add that to the thirty or so I picked on Saturday and you'll realise why I'm getting fed up with them, next year I'll be sticking to the three plants only recommended.
We've had showers off and on all day, when I got to the plot it started to rain and I had to shelter in the shed for a  while listening to the drumming on the metal roof. When the rain and din had subsided I came out to see a rainbow, I didn't find a pot of gold but at least I didn't have to water the plants this evening.

Kobocha comin' atcha

I've picked my first kobocha of the season. I'm not actually sure when they're supposed to be ready but the one on the right seemed big enough so I cut it off the vine and will eat it later. The packet the seeds came in said to harvest them when they were about 1kg, mine is 1.25Kg. There are a couple of others just as big and about seven more that are beginning to to swell. According to Wikipedia Kobocha is a Japanese variety winter squash that is revered as an aphrodisiac by some cultures! Wikipedia also says that you have to leave the Kobocha for 13 days in the warm and them a month in a cool place for it to ripen properly after it has been picked, they apparently last for up to three months.

In the green house I have a tray of lettuce and a try of rocket, it seems quite happy and growing well so I think I'll leave where it is and harvest as required.

A view across plot 68 from the bottom corner. On top of the old tool box you can see the kobocha and some of the thirty courgettes I picked. The french beans are going crazy too, I picked a couple of tubs of them and there are many more to come. I've now dug up about two thirds of my early potatoes, not a huge yield but as we don't eat them that often it's just as well.

And the view from the other end of the plot.