The beans are now towering over the garlic, the wet week has seen everything grow including the weeds. I also spotted my first blackfly, it'll be time to pinch out the bean tops soon.
The main crop potatoes are all beginning to show through although there's nothing from the earlies yet. Also a few rouge potatoes I must have left in the ground have begun to grow at various places around the plot.
Still tiny but the beetroot have begun to form their first true leaves now.
Still only about a half dozen pea plants have come through, what's happened to the rest? I might have to put some extra plants in but it wasn't possible in the soaked conditions today.
I'm so glad I planted some other things up earlier, artichokes and nasturtiums have now come through.
The yellow beans are just breaking through as well. I had hoped to put a trellis up for the french beans today but it was too wet to walk on the soil.
Ever faithful courgettes have all germinated. My neighbour said he'd give me some plants as well, I already have six plants so perhaps we're heading for a glut again?
And I also have some patty pan squash. The cobnut and kobacha squash haven't come through yet, too cold I reckon.
The green french beans are doing okay, I hope to get these guys in the soil before the end of May.
Along with the weeds there are some pretty wild flowers that have come through.
And in the hedgerow there are bluebells.
And purple bluebells!
It's been much slower this year. Although it was warm in March I think it's been cooler since and although we had a few downpours we haven't really had all that much rain here in Fulham.
The first stirring from the french beans planted two weeks ago, just a couple of them pushing through. Nothing else in the greenhouse has made a move yet, I think it's been too cold for them.
The very first evidence of potatoes, just one plant has become visible so far. I did some more planting up today, some purple french beans and some kobacha seeds. The greenhouses are quite full up now!
A lot of strawberry flowers and the raspberry canes seem to keep popping up all over the place.
My first rhubarb this season. Not the longest stalks but I decided to pick some anyway because there's so much of it.
The red green pattern of the stalks never ceases to amaze me, let's hope they taste as good as they look.
A mid week visit to the plot to make sure all was well with the wind and see how dry it was. The potatoes that I earthed up are pushing back out of the ground again, I was worried they might be buried a little too deep in places but they seem to be happy.
The artichoke has grown some more and there's evidence of two more buds growing on the same plant. I gave them and almost everything else a good watering. The plants in the greenhouse stay damp quite well apart from a few near the very front, it must get much hotter there.
Some tiny green strawberries, in fact there are loads of them. After watering I put one of the mesh tunnels over the plants to keep the birds off as the ripen. The rhubarb plants have fattened up again I think I could take another crop rom them this week end if I want to.
Raspberries are beginning to form as well, I guess i'll have to cover them at some point. The french beans I planted out early haven't enjoyed the weather at all, a couple have died and the others are looking a bit battered, by contrast those still in the greenhouse are doing really well and are twice the hight. The sunflower seeds I planted have germinated and so has the extra yellow courgette but nothing from the kobochas yet.
still small but the very first pods are forming on the broad beans I planted in the autumn. I haven't taken the tops off the plants yet but will need to do it soon to stop black fly infesting them. The plants aren't very uniform in hight but the tallest ones must be almost three feet high 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.
The peas have started to sprout, they're very tiny as you can see. It's been a warm sunny week and everything is coming on fast including the weeds. A few of the broccoli and cabbage seedlings had been munched by slugs so copious amounts of blue slug pellets have gone down around the greenhouse and some around the strawberries for good measure.
I planted up some courgette and squash seeds today, a little early perhaps but I'll get them going in the greenhouse and not plant them out until at least mid May. After last years courgette madness I've been a little more economic planting two yellow and two green types as well as two patty pan squash, two kobocha and two cobnut squash. I'll see if they all germinate and then decide where to plant them, I might see if I can grow the kobocha over the roof shed!
Another rhubarb harvest, ;ast weeks were delicious and there's enough here for another crumble too. Picking rhubarb is very satisfying, you reach down the stalk to just above the ground then twist and pull, there's a sort of pop as the stalk comes away.
To round things off after much weeding I put in a second row of peas lets hope they sprout in a couple of weeks as well.
Today was the deadline for paying rent on plots at Fulham Palace Meadows so it was busier than a usual Sunday morning. Having just got back from India yesterday I had been wondering if I would make it on time, there was a £10 increase in price if you miss the first deadline. As it was there was no need to worry and £25 secures another year of plot 68, what a bargain!
This was also my first post Christmas and New Year visit so I bought down all the gardening presents I received. Above you can see my fancy new boots, they're very comfortable and warm, almost too good to get muddy.
My new secateurs were also put to work. First i cut down the holyhock growing by the shed door and then I harvested a couple of my savoy cabbages. The cabbages aren't huge but do seem quite firm and ready to eat. I did also pick a few more parsnips which are still doing really well.
A little disaster was awaiting me inside the shed, the last couple of kobochas had been sitting on the shelves and were fine when I last saw them but in just a couple of weeks they had turned into a mouldy squashy mess which I had to throw onto the compost, such a pity as the last few had had a superb flavour. Lesson for next year, eat your squash before Christmas.
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.
Look at my pink potatoes! All these came from a tiny patch so I should think I'm going to have many more to dig up. These are my main crop Desiree potatoes, apparently the variety has only existed since 1962 and originates in the Netherlands. Their pink colour looks good against the still a bit damp dark black earth.
The screen on my camera seems to be on the blink (just what I ned before going away) so most of these pictures really were point and shoot. I picked quite a few of the small plum tomatoes but the big beefy ones are still green. After all the rain we've had a lot of the tomatoes have split as well, they don't look too good I think I'll stick to smaller ones next year.
Six kobochas in the shed and there's another one at home, I'll soon be able to start eating them and there are yet more ripening in the pumpkin patch. The marrow is still in the shed, it seems quite happy there but I don't know what I'm going to do with it? I picked another thirty or so courgettes today, I hadn't been to the plot since last Saturday because of all the rain and predictably some of the courgettes were pretty big already. I do hope Nicole manages to pick a few while I'm away.
This is the flower head on the fennel, the plants are about 1metre high, they seem to have enjoyed the rain and having the earth piled around their bases, I'm not sure if I was supposed to let them flower or not, but it's too late now!
The nasturtiums have gone crazy in the last week, they're bushes now rather than little plants. I rather like the flowers in a salad but they are very peppery.
Most pictures in my blog have been taken with my phone which is now officially broken. I forgot to take my camera with me when I visited the plot last Saturday so above is old picture I took. When we have photography competitions at work (whatever the subject) someone always sends in a picture of a bee inside a flower, I don't know why? This bee is inside a kobocha flower, I've now picked about half a dozen kobochas and there are probably hale a dozen more yet to swell. Even the 'barren' plant on the end has now got a fruit on it.
I've picked my first kobocha of the season. I'm not actually sure when they're supposed to be ready but the one on the right seemed big enough so I cut it off the vine and will eat it later. The packet the seeds came in said to harvest them when they were about 1kg, mine is 1.25Kg. There are a couple of others just as big and about seven more that are beginning to to swell. According to Wikipedia Kobocha is a Japanese variety winter squash that is revered as an aphrodisiac by some cultures! Wikipedia also says that you have to leave the Kobocha for 13 days in the warm and them a month in a cool place for it to ripen properly after it has been picked, they apparently last for up to three months.
In the green house I have a tray of lettuce and a try of rocket, it seems quite happy and growing well so I think I'll leave where it is and harvest as required.
A view across plot 68 from the bottom corner. On top of the old tool box you can see the kobocha and some of the thirty courgettes I picked. The french beans are going crazy too, I picked a couple of tubs of them and there are many more to come. I've now dug up about two thirds of my early potatoes, not a huge yield but as we don't eat them that often it's just as well.
And the view from the other end of the plot.
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.
