Home grown lunch

It's that time of year when growing-your-own really starts to reap rewards,even if sometimes you end up with odd combinations. So here I am eating home grown salad of red oakleaf lettuce, rocket, fresh peas and strawberries. OK I had to buy the feta :)

Picked earlier this week

It's the time of year when every allotment trip sees us coming home laden down with lots and lots of veg.....
courgettes, white radish, cucumber (first of the season)

 huge box of onions as we decided to lift them all

 runner beans, peas and spinach

 french beans and broccoli

 a smallish cabbage,lifted before it burst







and a mix of blackberries and late raspberries



I forgot though to photograph the tomatoes which have moved rapidly from being a rarity to having too many!

First of the month - August

 the day - and the month - started off sunny, so we briefly went to the allotment and came back with a box of goodies - potatoes, rhubarb, a few raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and even blackberries,

 tomatoes (probably the first of a glut)



french and runner beans

 a handful of peas

 courgettes (definitely well into a glut of these)








Back home for lunch - and the rain came down soaking everything and making the flowers look most bedraggled

 It may only be the first day of August but with blackberries ripening and Michaelmas daisies flowering Autumn seems only just round the corner

Busy Saturday

 Back from the allotment loaded down with all sorts of goodies - two carrier bags of peas, another of broad beans,






two courgettes,

a good handful of cherries





and a few raspberries.

Meanwhile, at home, the first chilli has set

Back from the holidays....

 we may have been having a lazy time of things for a few days but the allotment carried on growing ....so we came back to masses of broad beans, peas - both normal green and purple-podded - and soft fruit - raspberries, strawberries and a few cherries

Sweet pea or just 'pea'?

 I've two sorts of pea-style flowers in the garden right now - some tall peas plants and some sweet peas. Confusingly though, the white flowers are the scented sweetpeas, while the purple ones are the flowers of blauwschokker purple podded peas and have no scent at all.

Just half an hour.....

peas in their new wigwam

leeks

I started the day intending to have a gentle morning in the garden, maybe half an hour or so, just plant out my purple podded peas and do a little weeding - but somewhere along the line got carried away. So, I planted out the peas, pricked out the kale, pricked out Elefant leeks (a full tray then about a dozen straight into the garden), potted on some Primo cabbages, set more cabbages (Golden Acre for summer, Langedijk, Winter Ling and Late Flat Dutch for autumn through winter), set a dozen Tendergreen French beans, moved some carnation cuttings into the flower beds, planted a couple of lettuce outside and some in a hanging basket (currently in the greenhouse but I may move it outside later, and hopefully the plants will be too high for slugs to reach).

hanging basket with lettuce

By the time I'd finished, I ended up with a very late lunch at quarter to 3!

Spring is on the way!

 They may not be as fantastic as the snowdrops we found last weekend at Dimminsdale Nature Reserve but at least I can see these in my garden any day.

 It's not just snowdrops brightening up the garden - polyanthus,which have tried to flower on and off all winter, are now getting properly intot heir stride.

 and crocus are starting to bloom

 the greenhouse is starting to fill up - with spring onions and brassicas which have over-wintered there

 sweet peas and tiny salad leaves

 and trays planted with broad beans and peas (the holly should deter mice)

 Out in the veg patch, the spinach is looking better for a few warm days




and I even found some lambs' lettuce growing weed-like among the strawberries.

These daffodils are what will really herald Spring in though - doesn't look like it will be all that long to wait...

Picked this week - 26th October 2014

 For a while, I thought this was going to be a lean week - the tomatoes, peppers, cucumber and courgette above were all hubby brought home from a mid-week trip to the allotment...

fortunately we both went down on Saturday...

 more soft fruit..

 a bunch of spinach and american land cress

 another courgette, a bit small but I'd sooner pull it than it get frosted

 clearing more tomato plants

 tiny cabbage and equally tiny handful of broccoli

 better luck with radishes

a mix of various beans and peas

and this week's flowering 'weeds' - verbena bonariensis and love in a mist