Go wild

A quick Wednesday night visit confirmed things have got pretty wild again, just can't take a week off at this time of year. All the rain and warm weather had conspired to make the weeds grow like weeds!

The plants are growing too, here we see the very first of my patty pan squash, bright yellow about the size of a squash ball (appropriately).

I picked a few courgettes, four green and one yellow. There will be a lot more to come.

The peas are doing really well I think I'll have to pick them this week-end or next, they're so sweet when they're fresh.

A lot of weeding revealed a much better row for the secong parsnips and also quite a good beetroot row, it's strange how far ahead some plants in the row are than others planted at the same time. I saw this beetle which was about 4cm long. I think it's a female Stag beetle - they are quite rare.

The jungle

 I needn't have worried about watering the plants for the past two weeks, it looks like their has been plenty of rain. The french beans are already touching the tops of their trellis. All this water has also made the weeds go crazy and the plot was in a bit of state when I arrived.

The courgettes are coming on nicely, just the first few tiddlers to pick but flowers blooming with the promise of more to come. The patty pan squash also have flowers but the cobnut squash are yet to follow suit.

The leeks I left over from last year are now coming into flower, the stems are about five feet tall with big purple flower heads, very pretty if not much use.

The first peas are covered with pods some of which are beginning to swell. I picked a few for dinner but I think having podded them it might be a little early as I have micro peas but they are very sweet.

Here they are once picked and podded, the biggest ones are about petit pois size.

The broad beans are falling over with the weight of the pods on them. I picked a huge bag full making about five and a half tubs of beans most of which have gone into the freezer.

There are the two types of broad beans, the ones I planted in autumn are called Masterpiece Longpod. They have wonderful green beans in as the name suggests long pods with about six or seven beans per pod. The other type has whiter beans which are bigger but with perhaps only three or four in each pod.

The potatoes seem to be doing really well, especially the ones closest to the shed. I thought these were the earlies so dug some up but their red colour tells me they must be the main crop Desiree so i better leave the rest for a while.

The globe artichokes have come on a lot, these three heads are off the biggest plant. I was worried they had opened up too much but I was told the heart should still be good to eat, I'll have a go at cooking them later. The biggest of those three is about the size of a grapefruit!

And if that wasn't enough there were a fair few sturdy sticks of rhubarb ready to pull, along with the last of the strawberries and a few raspberries they will go nicely into a crumble.