All These Things That I've Done

It's been a busy July, what with Open Day preparations, the World Cup and such hot weather that it feels like I should be on holiday, not working. Lunches are getting more varied; the peppery turnips were a very tasty addition - I blanched them before adding to salads. But they, like the radishes, have not lasted well in the ground, I may try another sowing.

This has been our largest harvest so far, with our first courgette and the shallots, which have grown very well this year.

And we're very happy with our first aubergine! The plant in the greenhouse has plenty more fruits to come; the outdoor plants are slower, but I think we'll get something from them.

The ladybirds are making a show now, but too late for most of our broad beans - we've only managed a few meals from them this year because of the blackfly.

It seems that all the cabbage whites have emerged at the same time too. Everywhere you look they're flitting about or supping up the minerals where we've watered.

Another England win at the World Cup (this time 2-0 against Sweden) - AMAZING - meant another late night barbecue on the plot for Jamie and me last week. And we listened to Croatia beating Russia (on penalties) on the radio.

Kate's leek flowers are a fabulous display.

Now the World Cup is over and France won. The hot Summer weather continues to amaze - we're just not used to waking up to blue skies every morning! We had one afternoon with just about enough rain that we only needed to water the greenhouse...

 ... otherwise we're watering everything each evening as the ground is so dry.

We're leaving the lettuces under their cover as they seem happy under there.. these are the plants that looked so sad on 3rd July- great recovery ability!

And I found time to pickle some garlic in red wine vinegar, with mustard seeds, pepper, a little salt and a little sugar. I used these tiny Kilner jars which are so cute! It should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks and can keep for up to a year, apparently.

I used 3 remaining cloves to make garlic salt - the sea salt and garlic were ground together and then dried in the oven at 80° until it had formed a dry crust. I'm looking forward to having that on chips - it smells very strong so maybe not on a week-night!

Hmm, now what song to use for this summary of the last couple of weeks.... Ahh, The Killers  - please think of it as 'things that we've done'!

Little Things

Still no rain and as everything is growing it's getting thirstier. Small fruits are appearing in the greenhouse: a couple of cute aubergines

Each of the pepper plants have multiple peppers on them - all green at the moment, but we should have yellow, red and orange.

We're so pleased that we finally have some carrot seeds that have germinated - they took a long time coming but we can just see them in a couple of rows now. Much more speedy to grow were the Pink/Purple Sun radishes - these were only sowed a week ago.

And our little salad turnips are coming along nicely - I'll let them get a bit bigger.

Unfortunately the rows of radishes which looked so great a week ago have mostly got too big and are no longer tasty so they're destined for the compost bin. Fellow-plotholder, Neal, let me have some of his lettuce seedlings so I've put them in the ground - they look pretty dead, but they usually recover...

They're filling the gap between our carrots and our Brussels sprout plants - our three plants had become two after some beastie got into our nursery plot, so we had to fill the gap with one of Ivan's spare seedlings. We've also planted up some runners from our strawberry plants - they were delicious but rather short-lived - not sure whether it was the weather or the variety. We need some plants which will provide delicious fruit later in the season.

We bit the bullet and bought some chemicals to spray the broad bean plants which look like they may survive the aphid attack to produce full beans... We bought the pesticide because we noticed blackfly moving onto the leaves of some of our other beans and it doesn't seem like the natural deterrents are working...

These are our Edamame (soya) beans. And at last the Asparagus Pea plants are getting slightly bigger, but they're usually quicker to grow than this.

This is the structure for our Rocky cucumbers to climb up - one chicken wire door each. I wonder if the cucumbers will hang down like we want them to...

But I still haven't worked out the climbing frame for the squashes.... how long have I been talking about this?!

So lots of things are growing, but most are pretty small at the moment which is why they need so much water. But these clouds that were building towards each other just dissipated and brought us not a drop...

If you're in the area - come and visit us!

Here's a track about all these little things, which will hopefully not take too much longer to be big things! (from Danny Elfman)

True Colours

We've had a couple of rather dull, but warm days so I needed to inject a bit of colour into this blogpost. This is from my dead-heading a couple of days ago. I struggle to keep up with dead-heading but I know it's worth doing regularly to keep the flowers blooming. I'll try to keep up with the blooms this year!

We've sowed our Lark and some red sweetcorn - hopefully they'll germinate quickly so we can get them planted out as soon as possible - we seem a bit late compared to fellow gardeners. I re-sowed squash seeds (Honeyboat, Festival and Autumn Crown) and they've all germinated unlike the first lot I sowed...

Over the last few days we've also planted a lot.
Three aubergines Meatball, are planted up: one in a bag in the greenhouse, one in a bag outside and one in the ground - it's Jamie's scientific test...
We have three peppers in the greenhouse (which hasn't look this tidy since this time last year!) Milena, Chelsea and Britney. Also in there are two tomatoes: Lizzano and Aviditas.

We've planted runner beans, but only two of our Scarlet Empire germinated so I bought some Moonlight plants, from a doorstep in Newbury for 50p, and have planted them alongside - they look a bit straggly, but I expect they'll recover. And, that leads me nicely into the PLANT SALE that we have tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it - so many plotholders have already donated plants and I think the sun may shine for us.

Here's Cindi Lauper with the title track.