Sun is Shining

The sun continues to shine, the temperatures are still fabulously high and the rain didn't amount to much, but after my grumpy post last week look what we saw today! It's very small and maybe not quite as Amazing as the variety name suggests, but still it's our first ever cauli!

This variety is meant to get large and be bright white - perhaps it has sunburn(!) so I've covered it with a leaf, which apparently should protect it and maybe it'll still grow a bit bigger and keep the florets tight.

So that was a turn-up for the books! And last week we had a nice meal with courgettes, garlic, aubergine and shallots (with some added paprika). I had to add some shop-bought tomatoes (criminal) but they added a bit of colour.

There's our first Summer Crookneck squash in there. And the spare courgettes went to work - always gratefully received.

The taste isn't that special, but there are plenty more to eat and they're getting quite big - the plant survived the gales I'm pleased to say.

The trailing squash on Plot 46 are growing well too - I keep trying to encourage the vines to grow over the frame but they really want to go the opposite way - which is rather typical. Still, there's so much growth that the ugly structure will soon be hidden!

 There are several fruits on 3 of the plants but so far I've only seen one Festival.

The Borlotti beans have filled out nicely. We may end up drying them after all.

There's one plant which appears to be Borlotti but it's a little different...

And the Edamame beans are strange. They aren't filling out very quickly and are much smaller than other beans - I need to read up on them. I'm watering and watering to encourage them to fatten up.

The Aviditas tomatoes have begun to change colour. We were hoping to keep a truss for the Horticultural Show on 18th August - but I think the red ones will need eating before then and they're too delicious to waste!

Tonight we're having potatoes with caramelised shallots and green beans - from our one and only Speedy French bean which germinated! The potatoes (Kestrel) haven't got much of a skin, but we're attempting to bake them - they smell nice while they're cooking.

These Geum flowers are lovely. All the stems have been chopped back a couple of times and they re-grow with lovely blooms - we bought this as a small plant at last year's HAHA plant sale.

And these Rudbeckia were a present from my niece a few years ago. I transplanted a tiny part last year and it's very happy in a pot in this warm spot.

A colourful post deserves some Rainbow chard - I'm going to use it like spinach in a spanish omelette during the week - Jamie still refuses to eat chard :-) I'll use a big frying pan so that I can fit lots of courgette in there too and maybe that's what the tomatoes will be added to...

So it's the beginning of August and the hedgerow is already full of red berries, blackberries and even sloes. Harvests have certainly been a bit short-lived for us this year, but we've enjoyed it and there's still more to come...

Lark and Double Red Sweetcorn

So, with a lot of  red, gold and lots of green in this post it deserves a bit of reggae, from Bob Marley - how many times I could have used this song this year?