The recent combination of hot sun and steady rain has had everything growing like mad - especially the weeds :-(
We have a roll of weed mat fabric for the footpaths and need to get that down asap - Steve is doing the hard work clearing the surfaces, should make some progress this week.
We are eating our produce quite often now - potatoes (Anyas are The Best), salad, rasps, red onions, multi-coloured carrots. Not much of anything, but still lovely.
The parsnips are about there, Id like to leave some for Xmas if they will keep okay in the ground.
The shallots which went in very late (gift from a neighbour) are doing fine, will leave them as long as possible before pulling.
The salad onions and chard are up, not ready yet but might try the chard leaves next week in a salad.
Another neighbour donated a few spare leeks yesterday, they are already in a gap in the onion bed.
Cucumber plants have their first teensy cucumbers on, about 1" long. They only get to 5-6" anyway, but still a long way to go. Some of the leaves dont look good - they have gone lacey and holey in the middle - not from being eaten, maybe sun scorch damage ?
The asparagus is going great guns. No sign of anything dying back yet, fat spears still coming up on the Backlim and Anjlim, the purple one is still tiny and skinny but a little better than earlier in the year. Quite excited about prospects for next year when we can pick just one spear per crown.
Rhubarb is troubling me a bit. A few of the newer leaves have gone a dark red/brown and are quite crunchy. Also poss caused by sun on wet leaves but not sure what to do - probably pull the damaged stems off. The volunteer rhubarb is thriving and the first one that seemed to be failing (too close to the hedge ?) has recovered a bit. I will move them both in the autumn.
Oh, we have had a blueberry ! Just the one that the birds left us :-) A couple more berries on the way - the plant needs to go back into a pot, it doesnt like being in the ground. I think I might put a red goosegog ('Pax') in the gap.
Runner beans are flowering well, no sign of any pods yet.
Squashes (Butternut, table Queen) are both stopped at about 6". Not sure why, maybe putting down roots before they take off ? If nothing happens soon they may be too late...
Flower beds are pretty raggedy looking. The Hollyhocks are just flowering but have quite bad rust on their lower halves. Need to pick the lupin pods to dry and plant the seeds - not sure how that works, will have to read up. Otherwise, grass is encroaching and needs riping out/edging and lots of dead-heading to do.
The large pepper in a pot still has lots of fruit, but they are going from green to brown without the red in between ! Not sure what is going wrong, but not a success.
Last thing for now - looking forward to making curry with home grown coriander leaves ! Lots of it coming up now, just a tiny bit longer to wait....
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Originally broadcast back in August to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Miles' Kind of Blue album, I finally got round to listening to this today (whilst cleaning the kitchen). It's a good one hour doc presented by Brit trumpeter Guy Barker with plenty of clips of the record, interesting comments and historical interviews. I have a copy in mp3 if anyone's interested.
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