A ladybird gets its spots!

While we were at the plot yesterday we saw that a ladybird had just emerged from his chrysalis, which you can see on the cane below him.

Over the next couple of hours his spots became clearer and here he is the end result - quite amazing!

Shallots galore

At last a lovely warm sunny day this July! We went up the plot in the morning and have laid all our shallots out to dry on a canopy for a few days - looks like we'll have plenty of pickled onions at Christmas and beyond!

We planted out the 12 french bean plants which were germinated under the cloche. We put a few in between the sweetcorn plants, but the others in the legume quarter.

The first patty pan courgette is swelling - it's meant to be white, so though you can eat them when they're small I presume I should wait for it to change colour. The green courgette is providing me with plenty for the timebeing anyway.

We've got rather behind with picking the broad beans. Will probably make some humous or find some other way of using lots of beans - broad bean soup may be interesting..

The only shed I'm allowed!

My friends at work, Cathy and Sarah, gave me this lovely cake for my birthday at the weekend!

I can't tuck into it yet - need to leave it intact to show to others :-)

Peas, peas, peas

Managed to avoid the rain while we picked peas. Loads to be picked and plenty more coming. The smaller ones seem to have managed to avoid the pea moth but there were still lots with larvae in them - urgh, makes podding a bit of a chore! Anyway, they tasted lovely along with spuds and onions.

We need to pick more broad beans - I took a load to work the other day but there are still masses more. These two butterflies were sheltering from the rain amongst the leaves.

The french beans have all sprouted in the cloche so we'll plant them out at the weekend and beans are just about big enough to pick from the 5 plants we planted out already.

Fungus Gnats

It's been really rainy over the last couple of days. We've been up to pick food but haven't done much else. Had a courgette, spring onions and chard yesterday. Today pulled a load of Rockets from just one plant (forgot to weigh them) and some lettuce and radishes.
Peas and broad beans are desperate to be picked, but we've got a cabbage from Malcolm today, so they'll have to wait till later in the week...

We took up a lot of compost today - all the broad bean pods, etc and some cardboard boxes (which is mainly what we use as brown for our compost and it works well).
There were masses of little black flies all over the wooden compost bin - fungus gnats apparently, don't seem to do any harm.

Potato, carrots and onions for tea

Picked a couple of lovely big onions, another Rocket spud and a few carrots (Early Nantes - they're so delicious!). They're all cooking (dauphinois-styly) in the oven at the moment.

The crimson broad beans have flowered - they're really beautiful and lots of different pinks and purply. I thought they'd all look the same. The beans are meant to be red in green pods, but we'll see...

Broad Beans galore and first courgettes

Jamie pickled our first lot of beetroot yesterday - in red wine vinegar.

Picked another mass of broad beans for tea and to have raw in a salad tomorrow lunchtime. The crimson broad beans are just starting to flower - I'll take a photo when a few more have bloomed.

Also picked the first 2 courgettes - they're only little and there are 2 more growing already. I'll try to keep ahead of the game, otherwise they'll be marrows within a couple of days.

Pea moth

Taken from my website for 2010 - some things don't change though

Hmm, well we did pick a lot of peas and they really WERE delicious, but podding and finding little caterpillars is REALLY unpleasant! Timing must have just been wrong when we planted the first lot as there were a lot of worms in them - ugh.
Hopefully the next lot will have escaped the moth laying period...

On the plot today...

We've sowed 2 rows of carrots where the parsnips failed - a row of Autumn King and a row of Resistafly, so they should be good for over the winter.

We pulled a Rocket potato which will do us for a couple of days and our first lot of peas for tea tonight.
We ate a couple of peas on site and there was a pea moth larvae in one (ugh), so more careful podding is required!
We got a lovely trugful of veggies today - we're going to pickle some of the beets and I'm having a broad bean salad for lunch tomorrow.

Avoiding carrot fly

We went to the plot yesterday evening. Jamie ventured under the enviromesh and weeded the carrots - all the carrot flies don't fly in the evening (apparently). We tasted a carrot, it was a yellow one - they're rainbow carrots - looked a bit weird but tasted lovely and sweet.

I sowed 12 more dwarf french beans (Speedy) into pots and left them under the cloche to germinate. Nights are still colder than you'd expect in July though - only 8 degrees...

mmm, look at all those peas!