Pruning

The raspberries are now history, so today the old wood stems were pruned to the ground. Over the winter I think we will move them, but for now they can grow the new shoots that will bear next year's fruit.

The last gooseberries were ripe so they were picked. We have had nearly three kilos from our single bush. A few more mange touts were ready too. A few more onions were ready for drying, I've dried them on a shelf in the greenhouse for a day or two and that seems to work.

Thorns

Gooseberries are mixed up fruit. Not that gooseberries think of course, but evolution and the hand of breeders have still left them mixed up. Soft fruit is all about attracting birds and animals to eat the ripe fruit to disperse the seeds, but gooseberries don't seem to get this. They produce succulent, delicious fruit, in our case purple dessert berries. You watch them slowly swelling and eventually ripening ready to pick but the bush has other ideas. It defends the fruit from all-comers with dagger-like thorns hidden under the leaves to assail you as you reach for that juicy berry. They scratch and stab you, they tear at your clothes and leave chunks in you to remind you later that you stole those berries.

Is it worth this attack to get at the fruit? Oh yes. They are well defended but the assault is well worth it. So maybe the gooseberries are mixed up, but they are delicious too.

See what the rain does

Today's harvest was nearly half a kilo of raspberries, a half kilo of wonderful gooseberries and three large courgettes. The first tops of the summer onions have turned, so I pulled these up and put them to dry in the greenhouse for a day or so. They are firm and a good colour, but they are smaller than last year.

We've had some rain over the past few days. The ground is not soaked but it all helps. The older sweet corn stems have responded by throwing out flowers. The male ones are dancing in the breeze on the top of the stems and the female ones are just showing on side shoots. The sowing in batches looks good because not all of the plants are ready together.

More beans

We went to make another harvest this morning; all is well. The broad beans continue to produce loads of fat pods. I took a carrier bag full again today. We took the last of the raspberries - about 600g - which will make another fantastic pie. The gooseberries also produced their last crop, about 300g, which added to the other crops is fantastic for just one bush. The runner beans are growing fast, but are not quite ready to take any yet.

The savoy cabbages are looking good, but they are a bit crowded. We planted them knowing they were too close to fit all of the plants into the bed, so now we will thin them to give the other room. Our first cabbage is small, but looks lovely.

All systems go.

We've just dodged a shower to plant out another couple of rows of parsnips, again under a fleece tunnel. The last lot look fine and the ones in the greenhouse are thriving so we went for it. It is clear that the plants in the greenhouse are doing much better that the ones on window sills at home, which is interesting. At home they are in heated rooms, but the extra light in the greenhouse is clearly what makes the difference.

We've decided to try planting the remaining sweet peas inside the fence - it seems likely that their nemesis was rabbit shaped. There is no sign of asparagus yet, but the spinach is big enough to harvest some for a meal tonight.

The gooseberry bush and currant bushes have flowers on them and they are bursting into leaf. The two small plum trees are also coming into leaf, as are some of the little trees we planted. The rhubarb is growing fast, I think we will harvest some soon.

We tried to remove some more of the weed roots from the hedge bottom, but it was not as easy as I expected. They have rotted down, so much is more like soil and is very heavy, so we don't want to overload the council bin with it. I'm still sceptical that the soil made from these roots won't be full of seeds from nettles, bindweed and docks.