Squashed

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.

Abundance

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?

'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.

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.

Bean feast

Not the most flattering angle, here's Ptolemy picking some broad beans. Both Ptol and Nicole came down to the plot today and I put them both to work! Nicole got out the hoe and started working her way backwards down the plot narrowly avoiding the artichokes. Here she is in between the potatoes.

You can really see the difference between the two types in the picture above, Desiree on the right, Rocket on the left. The potatoes must have read my last post because since I was last on site a flower has appeared. This is on one of the main crop desiree plants, they're very pretty.

After Ptolemy had picked a bunch of beans we started to pod them, we couldn't help but try them too, they're still small and delicious raw, Ptolemy took some photos as we did this. Here are some beans in their furry pods.

Here's me crouching on the ground podding a few more. We'll eat the beans for supper tonight lightly fried with pancetta and some sage from the top of the plot. I also picked a dozen raspberries and a few strawberries, these will be nice on ice cream for tea.

Before the girls arrived I had my first go with the strimmer. I bought a cordless strimmer from argos for £39.99, probably not much more than a decent pair of edging shears would cost and a lot less effort to use. I used them for a bout 5 minuted before I noticed that the centre handle was the wrong way round! It was much easier to use them once I had turned it, it took about 20 minutes to give my borders a good trim and make the plot tidier - they wouldn't bee very good for much more than grass and weeds but were perfect for what I wanted.

I'm sure the courgettes will flower soon, there seem to be buds forming on most of the plants. The slugs have begun to attack some of the more tender plants, I realised the cut and come again salad has actually become eat and eat again slug food and the savoy cabbage seem to be a real treat for them. I'm not sure whether the nematodes have worked at all? so I bought some slug pellets this time and sprinkled them in the affected areas I hope this produces the required results.

Here are the shelled beans - yummy! and there's a whole load more where they came from.