Beetroot, fence and a moth

A quick visit to check things over today. It's a wet, cool and blustery day so we squeezed into a gap in the rain. I replaced a broken fence post and Jean planted the next batch of beetroot to keep the steady supply coming. Some of our red onions are folding over. About half of them have flowered. I pulled the flower spikes off, but I'm not sure if they are still any good, so I brought home one that had flowered and one that hadn't so we can compare them.

Tucked away in the greenhouse Jean found a quite large, brown moth. As it flew it revealed yellow on its wings and when I looked it up I think it was a large Yellow underwing Noctua pronuba. It's a good looking thing, but the bad news is that in the long list of food plants its lavae enjoy are brassicas. Hmmmm.

Weighed down with fruit

Another session for picking fruit today. I picked the very last half kilo of strawberries. The plants want a tidy up, there are lots of dead leaves, and I want to see how the runners are doing. Later this year I want to move the strawberries by moving as many runners as I can to another spot and move a few mature plants too. We want their current spot as our salad garden. We need to grow some of the runners on to reinvigorate the plants which only really do well for three or four years at most.

Jean and I picked about two and a half kilos of ripe, lovely raspberries. I can smell some boiling in the kitchen now. We already have almost as much as we want in the freezer for the rest of the year, so in spite of eating them and giving loads away we still lots left. The raspberries canes are still covered with ripening fruit so there's much more to come. We took a few courgettes and some mangetouts too. Yesterday I dug the last of our winter onions and left them to dry. Two had flower stems which I hadn't noticed and their bulbs look small. We'll see how they turn out.

I still haven't mended the fence.

Bumper harvest

We had a bumper harvest today. I gathered about a kilo of strawberries, all ripe and delicious. Jean gathered about a kilo of blackcurrants. Both the strawberries and blackcurrants are nearly all finished but the raspberries are still getting going. We gathered about two kilos of ripe raspberries, with much more still to come. We clearly have different varieties of raspberries. We inherited them from the previous tenant. Some berries are much bigger and juicier than others some are sweeter and some have a stronger taste, the mixture works very well. There were a couple of perfect courgettes and some mange-touts. Jean gathered four beetroot too.

There is so much harvesting to do we don't do anything else at this time. I broke a fence post the other day so that needs replacing. All of the posts are vulnerable because the wood rots in the ground, but without the wire netting fence the rabbits would demolish the greens overnight.

After the storm

A couple of thunderstorms today knocked out our power and internet. The power came back straight away but the internet took all afternoon. We went to see what the rain had done. Some of the ground looked wet, but under the bushes it was still bone-dry.

There were lots of lovely stuff to gather. The blackcurrant bushes gave up another kilo of fruit, all fat and very ripe. The broad beans have all ripened together, we gathered loads of beans, indeed maybe too many because I'm not sure I've left enough to ripen as next year's seeds. This is not frugality - these beans have been grown on the site for years and have become well adapted to it. We still have some seeds left from last year so we should be covered. We gathered nearly a kilo of raspberries with still much, much more to come. There were a couple of courgettes and some mange touts too.

Sweet peas

Jean had just the strawberry beds to weed to finish her latest pass of weeding. Of course weeding in the summer is never finished, but doing a little each time stops it being a chore and stops the bigger weeds getting a hold. I picked our first batch of sweet peas. They are the usual blend of different colours and patterns and they have a great perfume. Cutting them just encourages more, so there will be loads. Jean picked another huge batch of strawberries, again only the completely ripe ones.

On the way out we talked to the newest arrivals Kim and Andy, who's strawberries disappear just as they get ripe. Kim seems to think it's mice , but I bet her mice have wings. I think they might need to cover them. We gave them some of our berries - we just have too many all at once. I dug our first yellow winter onions. The tops are starting to keel over so I pulled three to try. I didn't dry them much as we're not planning to store them. We'll pull a few as we need them. Another little batch of mange touts were ready so we'll have them with our meal tonight. There looks as though there will be another batch of raspberries ready in a day or so. My sister-in-law loves raspberries but can't get them easily in Hong Kong where they live. I'm not sure ours would survive the journey out there.

Break down

So, the hot weather was due to break with heavy thunderstorms. Hmmmm, a short shower and a distant rumble of thunder. I watered the plot as best as I could, Jean planted out a lot of stuff. We had been holding out until the hottest weather was over because the young plants suffer badly in the sun. The rest of our leeks are now out. Our first batch of cylindrical beetroot has gone out too. This was a free gift and I'm interested to try it. We have used Bolthardy beetroot up to now, which is good, but trying another variety seems a good idea too. The first batch of celariac has been planted out too. This will take until the early winter to be ready. We took another courgette, but this time it was a decent size and tasted very, very good.

Yesterday we took our first broad beans of the season. They were actually only just ripe, but that was a good choice. They tasted great and the skin on the beans were much thinner and lovely. We took over a kilo of very ripe strawberries and a few more beetroot.

Keats

The season of fruitfulness seems to be upon us, though it's only just July and not autumn as Keats's ode would have it. Maybe it only gets mellow in the autumn. We have a few mange-tout plants and they are producing ever more pods, with many flowers still to turn into pods. They are lovely when they are small. In fact I think I like them much better than runner beans, so next year I'll be sure to grow some more. I might try growing peas too rather than just mange-tout, but I think peas might be trickier to get right.

The courgettes are swelling quickly. The hot, sunny weather suits them , but they need water to keep them happy. The flowers look big and blowsy and I'm told they are edible, but I don't expect they taste as good.

The raspberries are suddenly ripening quickly, again I think the water we gave them a few weeks ago has helped swell the berries. They are very sweet and the birds love them, so the few that our nets don't cover have been pecked at. The birds are welcome to a few, we have lots.