The courgettes and squashes we planted last week aren’t looking too great, they’ve wilted a bit in the heat, but we had so many that even if half survive will be eating them til Christmas!!

‘Black Beauty’
‘Golden Zucchini’
‘Lebanese’
‘De Nice a Rond Fruit’
‘Patty Pan’
‘Yellow Scallop’

We’re not renowned for our success with seeds so fingers crossed!!

The potatoes were probably ‘over-chitted’ to be honest (four or five inch sprouts must be too long??) as they didn’t really have enough light while they chitted (aka as ‘sprutting’ apparently!), so it was quite difficult to plant them properly as there were roots sticking out in all directions! Not the best of starts, but we’ll see what happens!

We got most of the Swift earlies in, but there’s still loads left and still the Epicure to plant too. The potato plot may end up a bit larger than anticipated!!

Lisa’s pink t-shirt and the cotton bag (re-usable & washable – ooooh!!!) are available from our shop

So we’ve got:
Purple Moldovan Garlic (the bigger bulbs in the pic, the others are supermarket garlic which we’ll experiment with)
Radish – Scarlet Globe (plus two half packs left over from last year – Scarlet Globe and French Breakfast)
Onion – Red Pearl F1 & Ailsa Craig Prizewinner
Parsnip – Countess F1
Courgette – Ambassador F1
Broccoli – Bordeaux F1
Leek – Lyon 2 Prizetaker

And our potatoes, both earlies, are ‘Epicure’ and ‘Swift’.

Just off to work out what ‘chitting’ is!!

In the foreground are our leeks – now lifted and mostly eaten (Chicken & Leek Pie and Roasted Veg) – and our courgette ‘Ambassador’, which produced another whopper!

We do have a question though, when a courgette becomes a whopper is it a baby marrow??

7 sweetcorn – though some were not quite ready, so we need to make sure the ends are really brown and manky before we pick!

6 onions, including the red one!

Several beans – yum! We like these raw, often they don’t make it into the pan.

One little courgette – unfortunately two courgettes had been chomped.

3 tomatoes.

Oh, that’s the courgettes we’re talking about by the way

The courgettes are doing so well – we cut these two today and we have at least another five growing. Just imagine if Tony hadn’t killed the second plant!!

The onions are great and at the moment we’re pulling them as we need them rather than doing a complete harvest. We may need to harvest them all soon though, so we need to think about the best way to store them.

Tomatoes are looking a little sickly, but we managed to pick three… well, two, one fell off!

Our beans are really tasty – the Cobra seem to be doing the best.

And, of course, there are the courgettes!

According to The Vegetable Expert book we’re ready to crop some of these – it’s recommended that courgettes are cut when they get to 4 inches to encourage more flowering, so we’ll be cutting some this week. Next year we’ll aim for more courgette plants as these really have impressed us.

We’ve started to stake the ‘Cobra’ beans as they started to trail along the ground, unfortunately only two of the plants made it, but they’re looking strong and have started to flower.

Talking of flowers, the courgette flowers are fabulous! And it’s so exciting to see four baby courgettes looking so healthy… and there’s more to come by the look of it.

The sweetcorn too is fantastic, such a growth spurt in just a week – we’re hoping for six sweetcorn so that we can share them with The Gang (you lucky people!!).

Onions and leeks are also standing proud and getting large, funny how one red onion has appeared in the middle of all our white onions though – we’ll probably fight over that one!!

Today’s wildlife:
An amazing orange and black striped caterpillar
Baby frog
Bloody great pigeon
Several bees

For the frogs we think we need to give them a safe area! So many times we disturb them and every time they make Lisa squeak from shock as they leap out!!