Picked this week - 20th July 2014

 Another hot and mainly sunny week - though with torrential rain at weekend - means the summer veg are coming along well.

More cherry tomatoes this week

 Courgettes again - the first one always feels like a treat,then there's suddenly a glut of them!

 Weird cucumbers and one sensible one - the crystal lemon cucumbers are meant to be yellow and round, but the 'normal' green one on the left wouldn't even make it to the 'mis-shapes' section in a supermarket!

 A mix of fruit - strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb and astoundingly the first blackberries. I'm sure these are earlier than normal








Clearing out the row of lettuce at the allotment - most of it having turned bitter so not nice to eat

 broad beans and a few peas that hardly made up a meal's worth

An accidentally-lifted-while-weeding turnip and two garlic bulbs.

Picked this week - 13th July 2014

Quite a lot of goodies from the allotment this week, much of it small-sized veg.

 I'm thinning the turnip row and eating these baby sized ones as 'radishes'.

Having to eat up the lettuce while still small as it's trying to run to seed. A lot of it is bitter and not at all pleasant so going straight in the compost bin.

Courgettes are another veg I'm picking young and tender rather than waiting for the marrow-sized

...and peas - though these are sugarsnap/mangetout peas intended to be eaten small

These are there more grown-up relatives

Tiny cauliflowers picked before they too burst, and the merest sprig of broccoli




The small cherry tomatoes are ripening but it takes a lot to fill a sandwich.









Not so small - broad beans.

But there are small apples from thinning before the branches break

and small alpine strawberries that are still fruiting even though the larger types have finished








and small grapes, accidentally cut off when I was pruning the vine. I have found a use for them though - in salsa, with cucumber and cherry tomatoes.

Full sized raspberries but tiny gooseberries - luckily my parents have full-sized goosgogs to share.

Growing Ginger

 As last year's attempt at rowing ginger from supermarket roots failed, I was almost tempted to buy a 'proper' rhizome from a gardening store this year - then I saw the price!  I could have bought a kilo of supermarket ginger for the same price! So back to the greengrocery aisles I went for some rootstock.

Usually I only plant the sections of root that show signs of shoots, but this year (realising how cheap supermarket ginger is) I just cut the piece up into inch long lengths and set it all.

To get everything of to the best start, I put the pot in its own plastic propagator ie a bag which once contained bananas.

I was a little worried as it seemed a long while before any shoots appeared - maybe 3 weeks or more - and one is still more advanced than the other.











Now they're through and growing well, I've removed the bag. For now the windowsill is sunny and warm enough, and hopefully by Autumn there'll be some roots to crop.

Surprise finds at the allotment

 Look what I found at the allotment today! I have some flowers growing among the fruit trees but no poppies - and certainly there aren't supposed to be flowers in the cabbage patch! 

It probably proves I haven't weeded as well as I should have.

It isn't really in the way though so I'll leave it to flower, then try to collect some seed.

And here's another surprise I found in the plastic greenhouse.

We thought all the grape buds there had been frosted in spring but chopping back the leaves today I found a couple of bunches still growing. Hopefully now with less competition from greenery, they'll swell and ripen

Picked this week - 6th July 2014

 It's been another busy sort of week - with lots and lots to pick and eat from the allotment.
Lots of lettuce as always - red oak leaf and green flat lettuce caught just before running to seed.







 A turnip - first this year and about the size of a tennis ball








 Four tiny scrappy cauliflowers - the dry warm weather hasn't been good for them. Hoping the autumn crop is bigger and better




Starting to lift the potatoes in serious amounts now

Lots of fruit - raspberries, strawberries and blackcurrants

broad beans

 

cucumbers - small green ones (super bet variety, I think) and yellow crystal lemon

and a courgette

July in the garden - veg and fruit

 Gardening seems to be all about fruit picking at the moment - lots of redcurrants, blackcurrants and raspberries (even if they are hiding behind the feverfew)












The vegetable beds are dominated by this - a solitary brussel sprout that never got moved to the allotment

One side of the path has beans and sweet peas trying to climb up a wigwam

the other has mangetout peas

rocket

 At the foot of these wigwams are small salad veg - lettuce, spinach, rocket etc - and another 'left-behind' - a savoy cabbage

savoy cabbage

this seed bed should have been FULL of small winter cabbages and leeks but this is all that survived attacks by slugs and snails

 In the greenhouse tomatoes and grapes are filling but nothing ripening yet