Hot plot

'Ninety' said said a voice while I was busy weeding, I looked up to see the old woman from the plot behind mine.
'The temperature, not my age' she cackled.
She was probably right, the sun was fierce today but all the vegetables seem to be enjoying it, the courgettes have come on leaps and bounds, the green variety have much bigger plants than the yellow ones but both now have flowers and I'm soon going to be inundated with courgettes!
I was at last able to pick some of my cut and come again lettuce leaves. They've spent the week under the net tunnel and that has kept those birds off. I then planted some more lettuce and some rocket in seed trays to grow in the greenhouse.

I decided to get some more tunnels so I could protect my cabbages as well. I asked at the association shop if they had any, they didn't but they did tell me I get a 10% discount at the garden centre up the road, I wish I'd known earlier. The garden centre is still expensive but's also convenient so bought two more tunnels. I decided the cabbages in the ground were too far gone and dug them up and replaced them with the last ten I still had in the greenhouse, they're are smaller but actually have leaves so stand some chance of growing.
I planted the last third of my radish row and was able to pick a dozen or so from the first third, they're still a little small but almost perfectly round. I also planted some more turnips at the end of the half leek row. 
I then had a big harvest of beans, there are so many of them right now, I filled a carrier bag with them. We'll have some broad beans with dinner and I also picked a few raspberries to have for pudding.

The rest of my time was spent weeding and watering, I want to get up to date as possible before I go swimming in Turkey on the 5th.

Midsummer madness

Here's the view at plot 68, really nice to see things filling out a bit and beginning to grow up a bit. The courgettes in front of the shed have done the best and they're the ones that get more shade in the afternoon. The french beans are winding their way up the canes and you should see the size of my onions!

The raspberry net is a success, a few dozen I've picked this evening which will be great with some ice cream. You may notice in the top picture that the strawberry net has moved, it's now a salad net. If you look back a couple of posts you'll see how well the early salad was doing, that was before the birds and slugs had found it. This is how it looks now, I hope a few slug pellets and the net will help it re-establish itself, I've ordered a couple more nets online but the strawberries are over now anyway.

The cabbages have also proved irresistible to all the pests, I do still have some more in the greenhouse growing in pots, I might have to replace the ones in the ground, or maybe I'll just plant the others out and see which ones survive. This is one of the the most eaten examples!

I'm very proud of my french beans, they learnt how to climb up the bamboo all by themselves. I've been giving everything a good water in this warm weather, the soil gets dry very quickly because it's so sandy.

I'm going to need to do a weeding soon, they never seem to give up and there are all sorts of strange things coming up all over the plot. Finally here's a picture from the other end of the plot.

Net gains

After the success of the strawberry nets I put a large net over the raspberries which look to have a lot of fruit developing on them. A bit difficult to see in this picture but their are two posts with a wire between them and a large net over the whole thing which is held down with pegs.
So far it seems to have worked and today I just picked my first four raspberries and a few dozen more strawberries, sounds a lot but they're only small.

Also I have now thinned out my leeks and one row has now become one and a half rows. I bought a lovely dibber at the garden centre to help me replant them, although it made good holes they mostly filled in again when I watered the leeks back in, I hope my leeks won't be too full of mud. The courgette plants are getting bigger and bigger, there are flowers ready to bloom but they aren't ready just yet.

The parsnips seem to be doing really well, I gave that area a good weeding the other day and was surprised to find a few carrots growing as well, not many but I'll see what happens to them. The mixed salad is growing well as are the second radishes, I've already planted a row of third radishes for when they are ready.

I can't remember which are my earlies and which are the main crop potatoes, the two rows look different, one has much darker foliage, I'll have to see if I can find pictures of each variety and see which is which. They're fully recovered now from that late frost but they're not yet in flower.

When clearing out the ground by the compost bin I decided to lift the onions that had been on the plot when I first got it, they were still rather small but tasted delicious roasted with chicken last sunday.

Hot stuff

What a difference a week makes. The temperature has been well into the 80's for the last couple of days with bags of sunshine to boot. I've been away for the last week in Ireland where it wasn't nearly so hot and dry. The picture above is an 'after' shot of the plot, where it's a little tidier than how I found it. I've had to spend a lot of time cutting down the grass that was growing on the plot edges and also dealing with all the weeds. On the old tool box you can see some of the radishes I've picked for my dinner, we had them in salad last night and tonight I'll be roasting them - I need to pick and eat them before they get too hard and woody, I wish I had staggered the planting a bit or put some more in the ground already.

Here are some of the trays from the greenhouse the front one has savoy cabbages in it and the next two have courgettes, I was worried they may have dried out while I was away but as you can see they are fine. The courgettes have mostly five or six leaves now so I've planted out two rows of them, eight plants in each row - the book I read said that three plants are enough to feed a whole family, I hope I haven't over done it? The cabbages need to be a bit bigger before I plant them out. Three of the kobocha seeds have germinated andI think at least one of the others might which would be good.

The broad beans are looking splendid and buzzing with bees (spot the bee), no sign of black fly either. There are strawberries beginning to swell and most exciting the artichokes have germinated. Today I planted some fennel and some mixed salad leaves that were free from the BBC. Although I wore a hat and had suncream on it seems I must have missed behind the ears, not too burnt, just a little red.