picked this week - catching up after holiday

been on holiday so a lot of things to catch up on in the garden. came back to find a bag of runner beans waiting for me in the fridge and lots more still to be picked. the cucumbers were trying to take over the greenhouse - have several strange shaped specimens of fruit. 4 sensible shaped courgettes and one weird one. lots of peas to be picked from the alderman plants - some have dried out too much so I will save these for seed. the side-shoots on the green magic broccoli have grown - rather straggly but fit to eat. a couple of handfuls of small gartenperle tomatoes ready.

autumn sowing

had a couple of days of seed sowing for autumn and spring crops - radish straight into the garden; winter density and red salad bowl lettuce in a tray in the greenhouse and 3 types of spring cabbage - offenham flower of spring, spring hero (only 5 seeds left) and advantage - in trays in the stenhouse ( an ikea sten shelving unit covered with greenhouse plastic).

picked this week

runner beans! a few too many if such a thing is possible, beetroot - pulling it as it starts to run to seed, a few peas, courgettes, the first cucumber,starting to pick blueberries as they ripen, still have some alpine strawberries coming, taken the 5 apples from the new tree - also picked some from the large pippin for chutney making

broccoli

chopped back the feltham first pea row, leaving the roots in, and planted out the last batch of broccoli plants - some Italian Sprouting and some Early Purple Sprouting

kelvedon wonder peas

had about 30 small plants of Kelvedon Wonder peas growing in plug tray. moved these out into the garden today - hope they can survive the slugs

runner beans

hopefully heading for a good crop of beans. have already had some surplus to freeze. they're mainly Scarlet Emperor plus a couple of white-flowered Emergo which aren't doing so well. this damp weather seems to be suiting the runner beans more than the french - they started to crop earlier in the hotter weather but have slowed down now.

summer

2 days of summer sun, now back to rain