What a whopper!

Not a courgette for once (more about them later) but a massive cucumber! In fact I picked a couple although the other was much smaller and somewhat curved in shape.

Here it is along side a reasonable crop of tomatoes. A few tomatoes had succumbed to blight but the warm weekend weather has helped ripen the others.

A close up of my toms. They're good but perhaps could have done with an over all much warmer summer to get a really good flavour.

They look nice ripening on the vine. The plot is very over grown at the moment but there isn't really any point in clearing it until we've had a few cool nights and plants have begun to fail otherwise the weeds will just take over again.

The cobnut squash have really stretched out, covering perhaps a quarter of the whole plot. There must be about eight squash I've seen ripening, I'll leave these on the plants until they begin to die back.

Still a few more french beans going, once they got into gear they've done quite well over the summer.

This is the kind of courgette harvest you get if you leave them a week! At least five of those are marrow sized and I'll probably neither eat them nor be able to give them away. Remember less plants next year!

More veg

This is the mid week crop of courgettes, I'd guess around 4kg. I'm having to give them away now, the novelty of yellow courgettes delights most people who don't grow them. Next year I'll have to plant out only a couple of plants because the quantities are getting silly, certainly another 2kg picked today.

Here are some purple beans. I'm picking them twice a week as well along with the green and yellow ones. The purple have done well although the green are the best for size shape and quantity. I don't think I'll bother with the yellow next year.

The green ones fruit in great big bunches, I probably picked another 2kg of tricoloured beans mid week and about the same today.

My first ever cucumber! not bad in length if a little thin. I wasn't sure how much more it'd grow so I decided to pick it, haven't tasted it yet. Really these are rather difficult to grow without a greenhouse.

The nasturtiums on the compost heap are looking marvellous this year. I planted one but the other have come through from last years seeds.

Just two tomatoes. I'll probably get some more but many of the plants have blight so I'm not sure if they'll ripen.

I'd left a couple of artichokes that were too small and they have now bloomed, The colour of the flowers is most vivid, I'm surprised you don't see them in more gardens.

My squash are swelling which is good. I counted about eight so far, this one is the biggest at about 30cm long already.

This pair are getting bigger too. The plants like to trail southwards so next year I must remember to plant them at the top of the plot by the rhubarb.

Then the heavens opened and we had thunder and lightning. Behind the hollyhock you can see the leeks are almost underwater.

The pathways are trodden a little lower than the plot and turned into streams. After a failed attempt to leave I took a second go when there was a break in the rain and got home without getting completely drenched.

The glut

The courgettes are coming thick and fast, this little lot picked on Wednesday weighed in at 3.5Kg and I picked almost the same amount again yesterday. At least 5Kg of courgettes a week!

Likewise the french beans have stepped it up a bit too, about 4Kg of beans a week at the moment. Most of this produce is going into the deep freeze. French beans are easy to freeze, the courgettes are cooked up with tomatoes and then frozen.

The sunflower is enjoying the hot weather and looking at it's best right now.

My neighbour had some left over leeks after he'd planted his. He gave them to me and I've now been able to fill in where my earlier ones didn't take. Let's see how these ones do.

These are my cucumbers. The larger one is perhaps 15cm long but not very thick, I don't know how long I leave them growing for? The skin is quite spiny.

I've spotted about half a dozen squash forming so far, hopefully there will be a few more undetected so far. There not very big yet but will grow for another couple of months at least.

Although these ones don't look too bad most of my tomatoes now show signs of blight and the fruits themselves are not yet ripe. I wonder if I'll be able to salvage any sort of crop?

Although it looks chilli like this is supposed to be a capsicum pepper. I'll let it go on growing and see what happens to it.

Wings of Desiree

Although the potato crop wasn't as big as last year the Desiree potatoes did okay. Quite a large bag full to keep us going until Christmas I hope.

My sunflower (only one survived the slugs) is in bloom, just. I'm sure it'll open out a bit more over the next few days. It's not quite 5 foot high and the flower is only about 6 inches wide.

Courgettes are coming thick and fast, the yellows doing rather well. I'm picking twice a week perhaps ten each visit.

I might get a cucumber yet! Only one plant survived (again thank you slugs)  and it has several tiny spiny cucumbers forming on it.

The first of the squash are also beginning to form, by shape I'd guess this was a cobnut squash, I'll have to wait and see what the other ones are.

Finally some tomatoes, they're rather small cherry tomatoes. I hope we get enough sun to ripen them.

Olympic Gold!

A long time between posts but I have still been visiting the allotment so here are a few pictures of what's been going on. The jet stream we were told moved north at the end of July and so at last we had one hot sticky week which was just in time to set the courgettes off. Although the weather has since gone back to sunshine and showers I'm picking twice a week and we aren't quite eating them quickly enough. I made a courgette cake yesterday!

My other main crop is the french beans, nowhere near so prolific as last year but pretty with the three different colours I planted.

The yellow ones have the smallest harvest, they tend to be flat and rippled with only a pair on each fruiting spur.

The purple ones have done much better, quite long round beans that usually go on to produce even more from each spur. The purple flowers turn blue as they die off.

The green although the shortest are the most abundant and at times hang in great bunches. They are really the best but it was fun to try the other ones.

Intermittent crops of raspberries have been enjoyed with ice cream, I like to mash them up to make my own raspberry ripple flavour.

At last the tomatoes are a flower but I think some of the other plants may have a bit of blight. The potatoes also got leaf blight so I've started to dig them up. The potatoes themselves are okay but the harvest again is much less than last year.

This is a self seeded nasturtium which is growing on my compost heap. The seeds I planted both this year and last have quite yellow flowers but I prefer these intense orange ones.

The five broccoli plants I got from mum are in the ground, I planted my last few cabbages between them to make a row. A net to keep the birds off and a liberal sprinkling of slug pellets has helped protect them so far. 

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.

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. 

Progress

Such a long time since my last entry and so much has happened, sorry I've been to busy to post. a two week holiday in June isn't the best timing for the allotment but it has to be done. This bag of beans I picked before I went away.

Some pods held as many as seven beans! Shelling them takes ages and is hard work on my nails.

I've probably picked about a dozen of these tubs full now, each tub holds about 700g of beans. There are eleven tubs in the deep freeze and we've eaten a few beans already.

I had quite a tasty strawberry crop too, these are from the newer plants I put in last year. They have a really good flavour.

Yum yum!

The french beans aren't looking so hot right now. Quite a few had blown off their canes and I had to re wrap them, you always twist them anti-clockwise because this is the way they grow. I wonder if they grow clockwise in Australia?

The parsnips are doing well, really! I had to do a lot of careful weeding but the Turnips and beetroot have fared okay as well.

I put out some tomato plants before I went away worried that they'd dry out if I left them undercover.  They've survived but are still really small, the few I did leave covered are much bigger and I need to plant them out as well now.

The potatoes are in flower, these ones are a pretty pale shade of blue.

Most of them are whiter like these above.

I have several big globe artichokes now. This plant has tulip shaped globes.

These are more traditional round artichokes but they're supposed to be the same variety.

I picked two which we ate for supper, despite the shape they were very tasty.

More beans, like green fingers reaching up. Some plants are so heavy with beans they've collapsed.

My very first patty pan squash, it's about the size of a fifty pence piece at the moment.

The courgettes are tiny, quite a few fruits have appeared but all really small so far.

And the yellow ones are even smaller, perhaps one cm long.

This might be my total crop of peas. Despite a double planting I've only got about six plants and this is the first pod on the only one that's in flower.

I dug my garlic up too. The foliage had died right back, the heads aren't that big but they weren't about to get any bigger.