July/August catch up

All the flowers are growing adding splashes of colour & enticing lots of bees.

Lots of grasshoppers & slo worms too.

We have 5 Aubergine plants that are flowering but have yet to see any Aubergines.

At the garden centre they had free bags of onion sets that were past their best, so I picked up a few threw out the bad ones & so far have some healthy looking plants. They are red, white and snowball.

Lots of Butternut squashes forming & getting bigger by the day.

Pumpkins, Italian tomatoes and red cabbage with brocolli behind.

We've started picking the runner beans but need sunshine to bring them on a bit.

Lots & lots of chillies, hoping they'll go red soon.

We've had 17 cucumbers so far & plenty still growing. I've just made some cucumber sandwich pickle with a couple of them, have to wait 3/4 weeks to see how it turns out.

My first red tomato picked last week.

We've harvested all of the potatoes & shallots now.

I'm getting lots of carrots too, I didn't thin them out until they were big enough to eat so none have been wasted.

I'm astounded this year by the amount of courgettes we've had 61 now. Because I've tried lots of different recipes with them we haven't got bored with them in fact I'll miss them in the winter. I'm doing a blog post on my other blog of courgette recipes.

And then we had rain!

After weeks and weeks of sunshine we've finally had some decent rain one of the sunflowers open yesterday, I'm amazed that none of them went over in the gales unlike the sweetcorn.

Which luckily we were able to upright & fingers crossed no harm done, in fact a couple of days later we saw the corn had started to grow.

The sunburst pattypans are doing well haven't picked any yet but it won't be long now.

The marrows are also lapping up all the rainwater.

The outdoor Italian bush tomatoes are starting to fruit too.

Flowers are starting to come on the Aubergines, this year I have them in a little plastic greenhouse as I didn't get to pick any aubergines last year when they were outside.

Pumpkins are also prolific.

We've harvested some of the potatoes. L normally won't eat potatoes but as she helped with these she actually ate them & asked for more.

We've now picked 21 courgettes so as well as having them in meals I've made courgette & oregano scones, chocolate courgette cake, courgette clafoutis & chutney. I also swapped a couple for some blackcurrants.

Only a few gooseberries but enough to make a pie and some Loganberries

A bumper day on Sunday - turnips, baby carrots (needed thinning), some shallots, French beans, courgettes, Pak choi,rhubarb & Lavender. The only thing I bought for our roast was the meat & the breadcrumbs for the stuffing.

And finally I made some preserves Blackcurrant jam, Rhubarb & ginger jam, Courgette chutney.

I'm hoping that the sunburst pattypans will be ready this weekend I found a nice looking recipe so can't wait to try it out. Have to make another chocolate courgette cake too, requested by elder daughter who doesn't eat courgettes but managed to eat most of the other cake!

First week of July

We've actually had some rain in the past week, one day it was quite heavy showers & another day of drizzle the ground is still very dry under the plants though. We've been picking broad beans, peas, lettuce & Pak choi virtually every day.

There are Pattypan, Courgette, Marrow & Pumpkin flowers everywhere but none on the Butternut squashes yet.

Marrow.

Pattypan

Pumpkin.

The sweetcorn plants are doing really well.

The red cabbage & Chard are coming along nicely too.

The Peppers have a lot of greenery & I can see buds of flowers on them.

The tomato plants have gone haywire & have plenty of fruits forming.

We dug a few of the potatoes - Desiree.

One days harvest showing Turnips,Rhubarb, peas, lettuce, purple radish, Broad Beans,Pak choi and the first cucumber, only a small one but

there are plenty more nearly ready!