Another trug of goodies

We picked a radish - one of the 'Candela di Fuoco' ones. Lovely and tasty and HUGE!

We gave the celery a bit more room as the leaves were pressing against the top of the netting. Took the opportunity to pick a few stems (to add to some stuffing and soup this evening). Some of the plants look like celery from the shops, but the stems are weird - they're hollow... not sure whether this is to do with lack of water or whether celery is meant to look like this before it's fully formed! Will wait and see as it's got another month or two to grow really...

I'm having a stuffed patty pan for tea and some white/yellow/orange carrot soup for lunch for the next couple of days so had a lovely full/colourful trugful of veggies to take home. There's the celery, carrots, thyme, Orla spuds, onions and a little cucumber for Jamie's sarnies and the obligatory courgette in there to. Lovely!

Comparisons

Quite a few people on site have noticed that their sprouts aren't looking too good - either not producing any sprouts up the stem or 'blowing out' (not forming little buds). Ours are under the enviromesh so are a bit tricky to see. It's clear that some of ours have done better than others.

This plant looks reasonably happy. There are sprouts, though some do appear to have blown, so hopefully there'll be enough for Christmas lunch...

The sprouts on this plant appear to just be made up of a couple of leaves, so, unless, they do a lot of growing over the next couple of months they may not amount to much....

Our leeks are looking pretty good, although a couple have started to be eaten - not sure what by. It may be birds or maybe slugs.. The majority of plants seem fine at the moment, so we hope it stays that way!

Sorting out Compost

We were up the plot this morning as it was quite warm, although not as sunny as it should be in August!
We've sorted out the compost bins completely now and have made an area where we'll store the horse manure before it's ready to be used. We're going to keep it covered with black plastic so that it doesn't all get washed away and the worms should like it under there too...

The black compost bin is almost full and we're leaving that till next year - it's full of worms. The green bin we'll keep adding to and the wooden (open) bin is empty at the moment - that'll be used for all the beans, etc. when the time comes - not yet though, there are masses of runners coming through still.

Mostly runner beans

Rainy most of today so we just picked some runners to have with our tea. They just keep on growing! Every time you turn round there's another bunch ready to be picked. The longest one we picked was 14 inches long!!

We left just as it looked like it was going to pour again. Looked beautiful in the sunshine with the dark sky and all the berries in the hedgerow.

Spuds and Raspberries

In Spring we put 3 spare kestrel spuds in Plot 8A, alongside the raspberries. Anyway, we've been pulling them over the last couple of weeks - they're pretty scabby, especially compared to the lovely-looking spuds we've been getting from Plot 7 - they taste and cook fine though. The plant closest to the raspberries grew much slower than the others and looked a bit different, but we pulled it yesterday and it was a kestrel.
It seems that potatoes and raspberries are not good growing partners. The raspberries are certainly happy (Dave took a punnet-ful away today) but the potatoes only produced about 4-5 tubers and are quite uneven shapes and scabby.
We won't put them in there next year and will move the raspberries and get them under control now we know they're mainly Autumn fruiting varieties. The roots have got everywhere and are spreading to path and neighbouring plot so we'll pull them and transplant just a few canes - probably in December/January. Autumn varieties can be chopped right back and then will fruit in the same year, so they should be fine....