Monday 19 July 2010

The veg patch

Each meal now consists mostly of our own vegetables. The broad beans have finished, not a great success, but the french and runner beans will be ready to pick very soon. Courgettes are coming thick and fast, although they aren't growing as quickly as previous years when you only had to turn your back on a courgette for it to become marrow size. Talking of which we have picked our first marrow and have another of a similar size to pick tonight. I think we will use these for stuffed marrow and keep the later ones until the apples are ripe and make chutney.

Photo: The first of the marrows and a few courgettes



The gherkins, a first for this year, have been
very successful, the recipe for pickling them- not so. We only grew a few early potatoes this year and now wish we had grown more. They have cropped well, are of a good size and have a nice waxy texture ideal for salads. At the weekend we cut back the hulmes. We are still pulling carrots, turnips and beetroot and have more to follow. Leeks and sprouts have been transplanted. The parsnips seem to be doing OK. Lettuce as always keeps growing, the first cucumber is almost ready, the tomatoes have still to ripen.


Top left to right.. . Runners, with new plants following on the empty canes, next to them sprout plants, french beans, turnips, carrot, parsnips and beetroot. A small patch of newly planted leeks nearest to the path. Below the leeks the potatoes with hulmes removed Below the empty canes are the salad and herb crops hidden by the massive courgette leaves.To the right of the courgettes the gherkins, above them the squash, marrow and cucumber plants.Next to the gherkins are the red onions, the shallots, which are ready to harvest and then more onions. In the bottom corner just out of the photo, the rhubarb.


The outdoor toms 'Red Alert' have plenty of fruit, the ones in the greenhouse 'Swe
et million and Gardeners Delight' I am disappointed in. Maybe they will still come good.



Considering the difficult weather conditions of late the garden is doing alright. As always some successes and some failures but overall worthwhile.




7 comments:

Marianne said...

Oh how jealous I am of your beautiful veggies. I'm going to look up some of the veggies you mentioned - they aren't ones I'm familiar with. Keep on growin'!

Sandra said...

The veg patch is down to my husbands hard work...he is so much tidier than me !

I grow the seedlings but once in the veg patch he takes over the growing.

Only the greenhouse crops, tomatoes and flowers are down to me.

Anonymous said...

my gardeners delight and sweet million are not really there yet either.. had a couple of GD
sweet million is not so good ,dont think i will do that next year, byut there are earlier varieties and later ones. the fantasio are on course, and the sweet olive are cropping nicely

Sandra said...

The indoor tomatoes just seem to be lacking in flowers and therefore fruit, Red alert a bush variety has plenty of fruit coming but a fair way off ripening. I was very late sowing this year though.

Marianne said...

Sandra, I do wish my husband was more interested beyond the part where he disks it with his tractor in the spring. He leaves the planting and weeding up to me because they don't require heavy machinery :) He loves to use the canner, so I am very grateful we will have vegetables through the winter.

Today we have beets! I'm experimenting - planted the heirlooms Albino, Bulls Blood, Cylindria and Chioggia as well as Touchstone Gold. Cylindria has done the best so far. But there is trouble...there is a mole in the beet bed. Time to bring in the husband. No heavy machinery, but he loves to trap things too.

Sandra said...

We all love beetroot and never grow enough.

We had a mole uproot all the seedlings and the last sowing the pigeons ate but we have had a few and there is more to come.

I am off to google the types you mentioned to see if they are available over here.

Marianne said...

I was just reading in my gardening book "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades" by Steve Solomon who started Territorial Seeds here in Oregon (excellent seed co.) and he listed Thompson & Morgan (T&M) in his list of top 5 seed companies. You probably know of them, but their site is www.thompson-morgan.com. I'm going to order a catalog so I can see all the English veggies. (PS I think I'm going to make a trip across the pond next year!)