Is it Summer yet?

It's easy to be disheartened as an English plotholder this year. The England flags were taken down as soon as England crashed out of the Euros with an awful football performance :-( The slugs are eating anything and everything; The weather has been as grey as the mood of half the country, but... Taaa-daaaah! Here's a welcome scene we haven't seen for a while! Blue sky - yay!

Of course you can't see from the photo that it was blowing a gale, but it was still lovely and warm and we got a lot done. Because of the wind we're leaving protection around our runner beans, pumpkins and the Rocky cucumbers which have today been planted in their pots on Plot3.

We planted up some tubs with flowers. The plan for an amazing display of 12 tall sunflowers has been scuppered by slugs - it'll now be an amazing display of, at most, 5 shorter sunflowers.
The sweetcorn grow quickly once they're planted out. We'll leave their cloches on for now, they may appreciate the extra warmth.

Quite a lot of the parsnips haven't been nibbled so we weeded the area - hope that doesn't make it too easy for the slugs to spot them - there they are, behind the little fence. Beyond the parsnips we've planted the Valeriana Officinalis which we grew from seed. The flowers are meant to smell of vanilla so I hope they grow as intended.

The broad beans are looking ok, but some of them have been got at (probably) by slugs and (possibly) birds, but there should be a few meals-worth of tasty beans for us.

And who's been eating our strawberries? Looks like everyone's having a go!

Never mind, still enough for us too. There's a tiny garlic bulb and a yellow courgette going home too. The feeble garlic looked like it had been pulled up by a bird, along with some of the remaining silverskin onions. The courgette had its end nibbled, but we'll add it to our dinner.

Most of the garlic is fine. It's in the raised bed, behind the onions, which are just beginning to bulb up.

And the loofah is slowly beginning to climb up its trellis in the greenhouse. It likes hot humid weather which it isn't getting at the moment, but now it's July so surely...

Jamie's sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans. We'll germinate them at home and then they'll be planted around the sweetcorn patch. Speedy beans are meant to be harvestable in 8 weeks - hope so! These are our Scarlet Empire runner beans - just beginning to flower

It's Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging next weekend - our plots aren't entry-worthy (it's a bit too early for us) but I like to support this type of thing so the allotments get a bit of publicity. Fingers crossed for just the right growing weather and no slugs over the next week....hmmm!

Plot3 will not be in Hungerford in Bloom!