I struck gold

Having picked the wrong potatoes a couple of weeks ago I thought it was time to try again. So I dug up one plant from the furthest row and confirmed these are the early Charlottes. One plant was about a dozen potatoes weighing in at about 750g, there must be about twenty plants in total if they're all this productive thats more than double last years yield.

I had a healthy looking crop of courgettes still with beautiful flowers on them. There's plenty more to come, I gave the plants a water with a bit of miracle grow to help them on their way. Four plants is a lot more sensible than last year. The green ones are doing best so far. The patty pans have a lot of little squashes on them but they aren't ready to pick yet. The cobnut squash are growing well but show no sign of flowering so far.

The tomatoes have delicate star shaped flowers in bright yellow and some fruits are beginning to form of the plants, I'm not sure how long they'll take to ripen? I gave them a bit of miracle grow to help them along.

It looks like an exotic bloom, I picked a couple more artichokes for dinner. It's a lot of effort to eat them but the taste is something else and you end up with a great pile of leaves left over.

This second one was a bit smaller and looked quite different with pointier leaves. being related to the thistle you have to quite careful handling the artichokes!

I spent a lot of time with my hoe clearing out the weeds, I had rediscovered a fine row of parsnips and a slightly patchy row of beetroot growing between the peas and the squash, in fact a runner from the cobnut squash is growing across both rows from the bottom right. 

Speaking of peas I picked about 2.5Kg unpodded weight of them and there are still more to come.

I also picked the last of the broad beans, the scare on the end of some of them are going black but they still taste good. Some of the bean plants are having a bit of a second flowering so I may get more later in the year.

The view across the plot at the end of the day, probably the fullest and greenest it'll be all year.

Hanging with my hoe

A Tuesday night visit, I wanted to check how the seeds in the green house were and see what else might need watering with this wonderful weather. It turns out the seedlings are still plenty damp enough which is good news, the greenhouse had condensation on the inside which is also good as it proves how much warmer it must be in there.
Before I watered some of the things on the plot I decided to get out my hoe. I'd never actually used a hoe before and didn't really know how exactly to use one until I saw them using one on Gardeners World last week. It turns out of course that it's very simple, and also works really well. I'd soon gone over  a large area pushing up the weeds and I hope with this weather they will dry out and die, it's very satisfying as it leaves the earth looking clear and neat, the robin was loving it and Mrs blackbird popped by for dinner too.
Then I watered, there is a hand pump two plots away I noticed that someone had painted the number 21 on top of it, it turns out that this is exactly how many times you need to pump the handle to fill a two gallon watering can. Above you can see the radishes after being watered and below is a strawberry plant, they're all in flower so I hope I'll get a few strawberries later in the year.