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.