Seeds

Last year when we dug up the parsnips we missed a few. This year they sprouted, flowered and now are covered in seed heads, some of which are ripe.Today I put some of the seed heads into a paper bag and shook them. The result was a ton of seeds and a lot of greenfly and black fly in a paper bag. When I got home I tipped them out to see if they look any good and indeed they do. If anyone has any hints for ridding the kitchen of a mass of black fly and greenfly I'd be interested.

I also did some of the obligatory weeding and pulled a carrot to see if they are ready. The carrot is still rather small, so I left the rest.

The male flowers on the sweetcorn are magnificent, but sadly there are no cobs, not a one. I'm not sure what has happened, other people have lovely looking cobs developing. I'll just have to write sweetcorn off this year. Mange touts have been doing well and still more are developing, Runner beans are slowly developing, rather too slowly for my liking. I'm still taking a few black currants and about half of the gooseberries have ripened and been picked. The raspberries are about done now. All of the fruit has been particularly good, with plump, juicy berries and lots of them. My freezer is bursting.

If only a small fraction of the parsnip seed grows next year it would fill the whole plot.

Catching up

After some pretty hot weather there has been the usual thundery breakdown and a few days with a fair amount of rain. Today is warm (forecast to be hot later) but the ground is very damp, so great for plants to grow. Decent rain is so much more effective at watering than I can be and it is much less work.

I have tried to tame the grass that grows in from the borders under the fence. Mixed in with it is still some bind weed too. I have resorted to carefully spraying the bindweed with Glyphosate weed killer in the hope of at least keeping it in check.

I took a few phone-photos (i.e. badly framed, badly lit and out of focus) to show some progress.

Courgettes are doing well. As always, if they get some sun and water they produce masses of fruit which I like to take when they are quite small. If left they will turn into marrows and the plant will produce a few large ones. If picked they produce loads of smaller ones.

 The runner beans are flowering and the first beans are growing. They grow very quickly so they need monitoring often to pick them at their best. If the pods get too long they often become stringy and the skins get too hard. I'm hoping to get lots of these beans this year.

 The spinach is a disappointment. I have taken a little to eat, which was very tasty, but the hot weather has made it bolt, which means the leaves lose all of their flavour.






 The mange-touts have been good so far and the rain will boost them some more.  There are two varieties and one produces fatter pods which may not be intended to be mange-tout, but they all taste great so I'm happy with them.

Gooseberries are in full flow now. The raspberries have almost finished, black currants are past their peak and now gooseberries takeover as the amazing torrent of lovely soft fruit continues. Surely the best year for fruit for a long time. These gooseberries are the so-called desert variety, so they turn purple when they are ripe. This makes it much easier to know when to pick them compared to green goosegogs. They are almost hairless, a bit sweeter than green varieties but they still have vicious thorns which need to be grappled with when picking the berries. They are worth it though.

Happy Yorkshire Day.

Fruit, lovely

The soft fruit looks really good this year. Raspberries have begun to ripen - I needed to cover them with nets. I've taken nearly a kilo of blackcurrants and I've scarcely begun. The gooseberries are just beginning to ripen and there are plenty of them too.

Courgettes are beginning to produce fruits and I'm taking them quite small this year. The broad beans also have some pods ready to take. There will not be loads of beans as the later flowers don't seem to have set into pods, but the ones that are ready seem good and are very tasty. 

The peas are growing very well with the beginnings of flowers forming. They are getting too tall for the netting so now I have to decide if I should take a gamble and remove the nets or risk getting the peas tangled in them. My feeling is to remove the netting, but we'll see.

The sweetcorn is growing well next to the purple-sprouting broccoli that Gary gave me. The new savoy cabbage is also doing well. The spinach is doing well, in a week or so there may be some big enough to harvest. Spring onions and beetroot are both growing well, but the newly sown onions need watering so they don't wilt in the heat of the day. Carrots are doing quite well and the last sowings are sprouting.

All in all, things are doing well and this evening I had a meal that included courgettes and broad beans followed by raspberries. Lovely.

Seeds are sprouting

I sowed spinach, extra beetroot, extra spring onions and more carrots and I'm pleased to say they have all sprouted. The weather has been very good for growing, with warm sunny spells and a plenty of rain. No baking hot weather, so very little watering. I fed and therefore watered, the courgettes to encourage them to fill out a few fruits.

The blackcurrants are beginning to ripen, the gooseberries are fattening but remaining green. The raspberry canes are covered in fruit but it need to swell a lot yet before it ripens. I have a couple of ripe strawberries and because I didn't clear the weeds around them very well the plants have not done well. I think I'll start again with new plants next year, probably in a slightly raised bed.

Some broad beans are close to being ready, runner beans are developing a few flower buds, mange touts are growing well but with no sign of flowers yet and sweetcorn is a bit small, but looks healthy. Everything is netted, wired or has dangling CDs over it. This hasn't stopped carrot tops being eaten but they are recovering. The fleece wall around them will hopefully keep off the carrot fly.

Sowing seeds

I sowed some seeds directly into the ground today. I like to sow seeds in pots and then plant out healthy plants, but today I decided to try sowing seeds alongside some plants grown in pots. I sowed beetroot, spring onions and spinach, all under nets.

The spring onions and beetroot are together under a plastic net stapled to a low frame. Last night something chewed through the plastic mesh and nibbled a few spring onion leaves, so I fixed the hole with some string. I want to replace all of the plastic mesh on frames with chicken wire but a small repair will do for now.

The big topic for discussion amongst all of the plot holders is what is eating all of our plants. I've not suffered much, but it would be helpful, I think, to know what is eating stuff, so I'm trying to work out how to get a camera that will be triggered by a passive infra red sensor to snap a picture of the culprit. If I build it myself it might be ready for next year.

More netting

Having seen a rabbit easily jump over a fairly low fence, I wondered if I should replace the low fences with higher ones. That would still not keep birds off my veg, so I'm leaving the fences as they are and covering vulnerable stuff with nets.

I put some leeks out yesterday and put nets up over them. The nets are big enough for all my leeks and some cabbage. I will need more netting yet and more frames to support it.

Jumping Jack Rabbit

This afternoon I planted out some mange touts. They were sown late, have grown slowly and look strong, but not very big. Following previous years were peas were scoffed by something or other in the blink of an eye, I put up some frames to grow the peas in. I kept the prunings from a hazel tree as peas sticks.

Just before I set off for the allotments the heavens opened and a downpour delayed me. While I was there there were a few spots of rain, but I got the peas out in the dry. I then set about the pea sticks which I thought would be a moments work, but as the rain started to bucket down it seemed to take ages, so I took refuge in the greenhouse. After a few minutes the rain eased up a bit so I finished the sticks, covered the frame with netting and headed for home. As I turned the key in the door at home the rain stopped, the sun came out and I needed a towel.

A bit later I realised that in my haste to finish I had not clipped the netting to the frame at one side, so I popped up again (in the dry) to do just that. As I walked past Tony's plot I heard a rustle and saw a small rabbit on his plot, inside his fence. As I moved towards it, waving my arms, it calmly jumped over his fence and ran off from the site across the road. The fence is about knee high but some of my fencing is only slightly higher and its effortless leap would easily have cleared by fence too. This is an bit of a surprise and I might need to think again out fencing to keep