It's unseasonably hot in London. The guy at the neighbouring plot said it was 32ºC and had been hotter on Friday. Most things are over for this year now, still getting green courgettes but despite the heat the yellow ones are giving up the ghost. There were a few french beans left that have now dried out, I going to try and keep the seeds to plant next year.
I've put them in a brown paper bag to store them over winter. I hope this stops them being eaten or going mouldy. I've yet again picked a good half a tub of raspberries, they've done so well this year.
My purple sprouting broccoli has flowered. It looks very pretty but you're supposed to eat it before this stage - oh dear. The first cabbages are doing really well, quite a good size and well balled up this year. The seconds are quite as impressive, I bought some more pegs to keep the netting down and make them bird proof, I hope they recover over the winter.
Cor what a whopper! A week away and the courgettes will play, came back home to two huge great marrows. I don't know what we will do with them? The green plants have many more courgettes to come as well but the yellow ones are giving up for this year.
I also picked my last patty pan squash. The plants had died back so I pulled them out to find this last squash still hanging on. I pulled out the tomato plants as well picking the last four fruit that hadn't got blight.
This year has seen a super abundance of raspberries, varying in shade from bright red to deep purple.
I picked an ice cream tub full of them and will probably put them in the freezer with the other two tubs I already picked.
The purple sprouting broccoli is beginning to sprout! It looks very pretty, we'll have to try it soon.
My cabbages are getting bigger and are also ready to start eating.
I picked most of the cobnut squash before I went away. There were two more barrel shaped squash growing on one plant when I got back. I pulled the other plant up as it had died back only to find another small squash on it.
It's the season for spiders and snails, hard to tell from the picture but this monster was about two inches across and living behind my watering can.
This is a squash from plant one, I've posted a few pictures of it's squash before. They're cobnut squash, a sort of butternut variety. This one looks pretty much as they do on the seed packet and all the others on this plant look the same. I've even picked one although we haven't eaten it yet. I had a second cobnut plant which produced loads of flowers but i didn't see any fruit for ages, then...
This appeared! In fact there are two of them, both already quite big they were hiding in the undergrowth, I found them when picking tomatoes. They are quite a different shape and colour to plant one, the seeds were an F1 hybrid so the fruit should all be the same. I guess I'll have to wait until they're ready to eat before I make any conclusions as to what happened.
Meanwhile it's not yet mid August and I'm already clearing the site. The new potatoes, broad beans and peas are all picked and I've now cleared the respective areas they were growing in. I'm not sure if there's anything I can really plant now that they're gone? It's strange having such gaps when only a few weeks ago I was desperate for space.
I harvested another half dozen courgettes, the plants still seem to be doing well but the patty pan squash have given up. I'm not sure why? I guessed they were pick and come again like the courgettes but perhaps not. I also picked another load of french beans, not as many as the last two weeks but still about 2kg, we still have many to eat. A few more tomatoes were ripe and there are more to come, we haven't had to buy any for a couple of weeks now.
I planted ten seeds, two of each variety: Green courgettes, yellow courgettes, patty pan squash, cobnut squash and kobocha. Seven have now germinated, they all look very similar at this stage so I have to be careful about which are which because they don't all have tags like the patty pan squash above.
This is a green courgette plant. The three that didn't germinate were one of the yellow courgettes and both of the kobocha, I dug around in the soil and in all three it seemed the seed hadn't done anything yet so I threw them out and planted up some more.
I spent £5 of my birthday garden centre vouchers and bought some more parsnips and some beetroot, both seeds on a tape which I planted above. I also bought some sunflower seeds which I decided to start off in pots.
The greenhouse is getting rather full so although it's a little early I decided to plant out twelve of the french bean seedlings next to canes. I'll see how they get on before I put anymore out.
I choose what was supposed to be the drier day of the weekend to start tidying the plot. Before I had even finished pulling up the kobocha plants it started to rain, and continued on and off with drizzle for the next couple of hours while I was working. There were three more kabocha to pick of the vines and then I found another small one as pulled them up, I've had fourteen in total.
I also picked the very last of the courgettes, the biggest being no more than about 4 inches long. The plants are still flowering but the courgettes have stopped getting any bigger, these ones have been around for a few weeks and I decided to pick them because if left any longer they may start to rot.
Weeding is very boring but it was satisfying to clear the top of the plot, the drizzle made the soil claggy, it weighed down my boots as I worked. I pulled up the row of fennel, it didn't seem like I was going to get any bulbs to eat and the stems were begining to fall over under their own weight. I forgot to take a picture when I'd finished so this one was only about half way through.
With the fennel removed you can see the artichoke plants in a row just behind the rhubarb. Next I'll have to pull up the remaining courgette plants and get ready for some new planting.
My prize winner! I came third in the Fulham palace meadows heaviest marrow competition 2010 with this beast above that weighs 4.26Kg, not only did I get a certificate but also £2 prize money. I was very close to the second prize marrow which was a sort of double marrow but we were both way off the winning vegetable which came in at over 20Kg and needed a wheel barrow to be transported.
You can see the double marrow to the left near the gigantic cabbage, the knobbly thing top right is the winning marrow. The girl who had the winning marrow also had winners in most of the other categories.
Here are my cabbages, I decided to free them from the green net tunnels because they were getting a bit too big. To stop the birds eating the leaves I've pulled the big net over some canes for protection. The plants are all a bit leggy and haven't started to ball up into cabbages yet.
The tomatoes are showing the first blush of ripening, in fact there was a plum tomato that had already turned red so I ate it. They have a wonderful flavour quite unlike the ones in the shops.
One of the beef tomatoes came away from the plant so I'm going to try and ripen it indoors.
Since last week I've picked all the carrots, a few were quite large but most are tiny and there only be one meals worth of them, not my best crop, not sure I'll bother with them next year. i've also picked the last of the french beans another couple of tubs of them, more than I was expecting.
My leeks were completely overshadowed by the courgettes so I decided to do a bit of pruning. The stems of the courgette leaves are hollow and make a satisfying crunch when you crush them into the compost bin. I hope this give the leeks a bit more of a chance, some of them look rather squashed.
The kobocha have really started to fill out, I've nipped the ends of the longer tendrils so that the plants produce side shoots. There are already many small fruit beginning to form, the one below is a bit smaller than a tennis ball in size, not sure how long it'll be before they are ready? I also nipped the tops off the french bean plants as they had reached the top of their canes and were beginning to to grasp at the air, there will be a lot of beans ready soon.
I feared that a week away in hot weather and I'd come back to a parched desert, but I was wrong. Everything seems to have come on leaps and bounds. I had about thirty courgettes to pick, some radishes, new potatoes, onions, garlic and lots of herbs. There are a few broad beans that are still worth picking even though we have two tubs full in the freezer and the lone dwarf bean plant had about a dozen pods on it that I also picked - and a few more raspberries to boot!
Here's a big courgette! I had picked all I could before I went away so this must have grown in one week! Paul hadn't even eaten all that I picked last week so I had to take some to work and give them away. People see to like the yellow ones best - they are quite and extraordinary shade of yellow.
The kobocha have gone crazy sending out long tendrils and were getting all caught up in the raspberry net. I've taken the net down now even though there are more raspberries to come. They also have lots of flowers and on the tendrils there are little fruits beginning to form as above.
Tiny french beans are forming, note how the plants grew anti-clockwise up the canes. There's almost too much to eat right now and I don't want to waste anything. I didn't have anytime to water things but luckily it has rained today. Tomatoes are beginning to form on the plants and I really should give them a feed soon. Some of the main crop potatoes have formed fruits, I know these are very poisonous but I don't know if I should just leave them or pick them and dispose of them?
