Reviewing the situation

A busy holiday weekend has meant that the plot has been neglected. I took a quick walk around tonight to see how things are. There is lots of sorting out to be done – branches, brambles and weeds to tame as well as pruning and clipping of the hedges and shrubs. Must try harder… The dying evening light brought out the drama of this courgette flower. The recent heavy rain has filled the upturned plastic lid and so the frogs are back bathing again.

It's looking promising...

The outdoor cherry tomatoes sown in February are starting to ripen. Turn your back for one day and the plants sprout about ten more branches and flowers rather than putting their effort into the fruit. But we now have some clusters of small green tomaotes and some of turning a nice shade of yellow.

Pumpkins

The sky brightened and we had a lovely warm evening which meant there were quite a few people working on their plots tonight. Our neighbours had two newly hatched chicks to show us – so cute! The pumpkins are finally starting to swell. These are Jack-Be-Little fruits. The butternut squash plant still shows no sign of fruiting but is producing lots of male flowers. Most of the courgette plants – which were really productive last year – have also been slow to develop. I have given them some seaweed feed so fingers crossed they will start to produce more.

A fistful of onions

All of the onions have now died down and are ready to lift. They have not swelled to a great size – partly because they were planted quite closely but also because I wasn’t very attentive in weeding around them. I also didn’t water them as I understand you are not supposed to water onions – but perhaps with all the dry weather we have had I should have ignored this. The taste anyhow is really good. Thanks goes to an allotment neighbour who generously gave us several flowerpots full of onion sets in the Spring after she ordered too many.

Stumped

We have had heavy rain over the past few days which has meant that the slugs and snails have been on walkabout. This is all that remains of a patch where we had butterhead and romanian lettuce growing. Notice that they have left the weeds well alone. They had also gobbled all of the fristina, aruba and raddiccio elsewhere on the plot. One thing I have learned is that lollo rossa is not the first choice for a discerning slug.

Two-Tone

I've been growing green and purple basil this year but one of the plants just can't make up its mind which it is.

Blackberry parade

Despite choping up and wrenching out as many blackberry roots as we had strength for last year some of the wild brambles have recolonised corners of the plot. They have also been sneaking their tendrils under the cover of the potato plants and artichokes with the hope of gaining more ground. Honestly, give them an inch... Anyway, the bees have loved the flowers and now these jewelled berries are ripe for picking. Not enough for a pot of jam but they will certainly make a few apple and blackberry crumbles.