St Swithin's day

After the wettest week in the wettest July on record we reach St Swithin's day and remarkably it hasn't so far rained. It might be a bit too late for my harvest this season though. I picked a few tiny courgettes and dug up some little potatoes. French beans are beginning to form but I don't expect anything like last years bags full of beans. If we don't have a few more sunny days I fear there won't be many tomatoes or squash come august.

A couple more artichokes for dinner, they have done surprisingly well despite the cooler temperatures and rain. There were about a dozen ripe pea pods which I picked, the peas as sweet as anything but not enough to make a meal with so I just ate them raw. Not much else going on, I got out the strimmer and cut the grass in the process of which I chopped down one of my violette french bean plants. Oh dear! even less chance of a bmper crop.

Pathetic peas

All this rain and weeds are growing like mad. most of the week end has been spent having a good tidy up. The lavender in bloom around the plot post looks good, the bind weed growing through the lavender isn't so welcome.

The french beans are reaching the tops of the canes now and are in flower. The Violet has appropriately purple flowers! The yellow beans have creamy coloured flowers and the normal green beans have white flowers.

The pathetic peas. Only one plant has really got going enough to produce pods, a disappointment after last year.

I ate them directly from the pod, so sweet and tasty. I wish I had a few more.

I was worried about blight, my neighbour thought my potatoes might have it. I think they're just going over. I dug up a plant to check, fifteen smallish new potatoes, all in good condition.

There's quite a few raspberries coming, they prefer the cooler wet conditions. In Scotland we saw them growing wild in the way Blackberries do here.

This one was ready to eat which I did without even washing my hands!

Some weeds are more attractive than others but they all had to go, at least they come up roots and all from the damp soil. I now have mud ingrained into my finger nails.

The view from the compost heap. Under the green nets and with plenty of slug pellets for defence I put out my savoy cabbages. In front of that there are some more tomato plants and in the very front patch I've tried putting out some leeks although they were rather tiny.

Blooming

Perhaps a little warmer last week and things began to grow. The nasturtiums are in flower, these bright red ones are self sown from last year, the other are more orangey in colour. The flowers taste hot and peppery in a salad.

Flowers also on the patty pan squash, you can see a little squash in there too. The courgettes got a bit bigger but the fruit are still too small to be worth picking.

My canes have a good covering of raspberries, I hope to get a good crop of them this year.

My main job was clearing away the first broad beans, they had finished cropping and were a bit of a mess having been buffeted around in the gales. This frees up a bit of important space for cabbages, tomatoes and perhaps I'll get those leeks in the ground?

Digging out the bean roots I found a few potatoes. This was last years potato patch and they must have grown form spuds left in the ground. A few were skewered with the spade but I took the others home and ate them.

The french beans are topping out so I snipped off their growing tips, they're also just beginning to flower.