Blooming enormous

I took this picture on a morning visit when the courgette flowers are open, they seem much bigger at this time of day because when they close up the ends of the petals twist down. The flower above is about 20cm in diameter.

This is a kobocha flower, when they're closed the don't look so different to the courgettes, this one is about 12cm in diameter.

'Gette powered

They're getting even bigger, the first row of courgettes has now over shadowed the leeks, I'm not sure why this row is so much bigger? The four green courgette plants grew biggest first but the yellow ones in this row are much bigger than their cousins in row two. My neighbour told me that he had a recipe for 'Marrow Brandy' that he was given by a gypsy woman that I could have, it's powerful stuff apparently. I think I'll stick to eating the flowers and courgettes, while googling for courgette flower recipes I found a site that sell the flowers, a box of 15 blooms cost £46! i guess at that rate we ate about £100 worth last week.

Row two is also producing courgettes already and I picked about twenty yesterday although some are still quite small. I needed to pick what I could because I'll be away all week from Monday. I also picked most of the first row of radishes (about twenty), a good selection of herbs, a tub of salad and about two kilos of broad beans! I had hoped to pick all the beans left but there were more than I thought, I put two tubs full into the freezer and nearly another tub in the fridge and their are still more that need picking. I thought it best to leave them now until next week, I hope they don't go too hard.

Row three of courgettes were the left overs that were planted slightly later, they're not so big yet but do have some flowers on them and I expect by next week some courgettes, next to them in the row are the tomato plants I was given. I bought some canes at the garden centre for them, in the shop the woman gave me a funny look when I asked for my 10% discount on them and some ties as it was only 46 pence off.

The french beans have also gone into flower, they've wound their way nearly to the top of the canes and are also finding purchase on the nearby chair. The kobatcha plants are also doing well in this warm weather, they've begun to spread sending out long arms from the central plants, one of which is doing it's best to climb up the netting for the raspberries.

Flower power

Yesterday I had a few flowers, today I've got mini courgettes! They seem to have grown overnight. Given how many I've got coming along I decided to pick a selection of yellow and green courgettes and a few of the male flowers as well.
The courgettes are so small and tender that they taste great raw, so I used a potato peeler to slice them into strips and put them into a salad which also included some of the raw broad beans and radishes.
I wasn't really sure what you do with the flowers so I googled 'courgette flower recipes' each one I found suggest some sort of cheese stuffing and then dipping in batter and frying. One thing they all seemed to say was courgette flowers are very rare to find for sale. This didn't really help me very much as I don't have any ricotta cheese so in the end I dipped the flowers in beaten egg, rolled in seasoned flower and shallow fried them, it was a great way to eat them but I do think they deserve a better filling next time, and judging by the number yet to come there will be a next time.

The courgette plants have grown much bigger than I thought they would, they're beginning to overshadow the nearby row of leeks that I only planted out a couple of weeks ago. In the above picture you can see another new power tool of mine, the radio! I play radio three to the plants, they seem to like it.

Finally here's another plot shot, there's quite a gap between the fennel and the strawberries that I haven't yet filled but with all the watering I've been doing I'm not too worried about it. 
Watering is the main chore on site at the moment, I met a man at the hand pump who told me that I ought to invest in another watering can, he seemed to have three or four and was constantly filling them and ferrying them back to his wife who was in charge of the watering. While I waited for him to fill his many cans he gave me tips on how to use the hand pump.
'Keep the handle three inches away from the the stand, like the peasants in the Dordogne' he told me.
I resisted telling him where to stick his watering can.