Growing Pains

It was such an amazing sky yesterday evening, I had to put this photo on the blog, but this post is mostly about pumpkins.

I'm preparing for the Pumpkin Competition at Hungerford Food Festival in October. I managed to get some Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds but none of them germinated. Fellow plotholder Jonathan left four pumpkin plants on our plot for us. I was so close to planting them on the empty plot that HAHA have commandeered for the competition when I remembered that they aren't pumpkins, they're Tromboncini squash plants! My "pumpkins" would have looked a bit strange compared to the others on that plot!!

So now the Tromboncini are on Plot 46A in the barrels and we're attempting to quickly germinate 2 more Atlantic Giants and 2 Jack of All Trades... We've got 3 months so hopefully we'll have something to show for it!
We've put two cucumber Mini Munch on that plot too, along with a row of swede under the netting.

At least I'm fairing a bit better with the flowers this year. We're having to water a lot as there's been no rain (apart from a few drops) for weeks. But the sunflowers and sweetpeas are doing ok. Also, I'm pleased to say that the asters got over their problem after I removed the crinkled leaves and I'm hoping the flowers will develop quite soon...

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing what they always do - but this year we're really trying to remove the side shoots! Flowers and a few tomatoes are appearing on the Aviditas plants and the Redcurrant, but nothing on the Tigerella yet.

My lunchtime salads will be more interesting when they have tomatoes on them, but the rogue potatoes from last week made fabulous potato salad!

So, we just have to wait for all these little plants to get bigger.. And I'm going to sow some more salady bits and beetroot to see if I can keep the production going for a bit longer this year.

Dwarf beans and sweetcorn

This song by Birdy seems appropriate at this point - enjoy!