Freshly Picked Lunch

There's nothing quite like picking your lunch fresh from the garden.

- A few home grown mixed salad leaves.
- My interestingly shaped carrots.
- A handful of cherry tomatoes which just taste so sweet.

Pesky Snails

My broad beans have been savaged by slugs and snails - the mix of warm and wet weather seems to have brought them out in plague like proportions and they're happily stripping whatever plants they can fit into their hungry little mouths.

They can be found clinging to the leaves of both broad and runner beans during the day - lots and lots of small ones hiding in curled up leaves, those that are left and aren't full of holes, or stuck to the stems and poles.

I also bought a dwarf sunflower the other day - having failed to grow any of my own from seed only to find it stripped back to bare bones (or the plant equivalent) including the petals.

Carrots - Seeing Double

I wasn't intending to cultivate a crop (slight exaggeration) of double carrots but that's what I appear to have done.

My extensive crop of three carrots was plucked from the ground this evening, just before I watered everything this evening as their tops appeared to be extruding even further out of the soil, so I guessed they might be ready.

Highly amused to find I had three interestingly shaped carrots.

Rootin, Tootin, Beetroot

Finally decided to take a look at the beetroot, which I'd sort of forgotten about even though I've been watering it each evening along with the other veg and picked a very impressive one this evening, so feeling very pleased as I've not grown them before.

Not that they're very difficult to grow - just a matter of getting them to sprout in the first place. There are a couple more to go but they A decent size, nicely red and a good shape, if you ignore the split on one side (that you can't see). Lovely red stems too, which if the leaves hadn't got so burn't can be used like chard.

First Runner Bean

The square foot garden is bursting at the seams as everything is really growing with all the recent sunshine. I actually found my first, solitary runner bean but a fine, foot long specimen. The bean poles have taken a bit of a battering from the wind and although I'd placed the runners at the back of the bed, being the tallest, but now that they're bushing out, it hasn't made it easy to get to them now that the plants on the fence have also grown out. No wonder I missed the runner bean. I'd normally pick them a lot smaller. I suppose I could pull up the dwarf french beans - they've finished now. Not particularly successful, I have to say.

The tomatoes are going equally potty. As usual I missed pinching out a few of the side shoots so most of them have two growing stems, as you can see. I'm feeding them like mad to make sure they have enough water and nutrients to get a decent crop out of them later in the year. Won't be too long now, as there quite a few green tomatoes forming and the ones in the hanging basket are starting to get some colour. That one really has been left to it's own devices with no pinching out as I thought it was a hanging variety and then realised it wasn't!

Odds 'n' Sods And Exotics

I've had a few pots hanging around for a while and finally got round to planting them up in a mixture of peat-free compost and the contents of a spare grow-bag. I've now added a cucumber, chilli-pepper, squash and some more runner beans to the vegetable garden.

The runner beans were left over from the ones I planted in the SFG last month. I was going to put them with the rest, as I have a gap but as they seem to be being attacked by the dreaded snails, I thought an alternate location might give them a better chance, so they're now in a large pot by the back door.

The cucumber is a ridge variety which has a much better flavour than the usual greenhouse variety. Not that I've ever grown them before so this should be an interesting challenge - especially as it's late in the season, so I'll be hoping for a late summer to help ripen them up.

The squash are all butternut and are what's left having not been ravaged by the snails from the one's I grew from seed. I've planted up three small plants but I'm not expecting them all to grow and will just pick the strongest one. I think I actually ended up giving the best ones away.

As for the exotics - the chilli-pepper is a jalapeno - I don't eat a lot of chillies but assuming any of them grow - I'll attempt to dry them and perhaps even use some fresh in cooking. I've never grown them before but saw several different varieties being grown by a friend, so thought why not. Not having a green house I haven't gone for the bell peppers.

Even just after a couple of days - they've all suddenly grown - shows just how restricted they were left in their pots.

My neighbour has also carefully nurtured three tomato plants that appeared in her flower-bed - having been smuggled over in my compost. She's now returned these to me ready planted up in pots, so I'll be inundated with tomatoes at some point once they all start ripening, especially as I've already got four plants growing well. Of course, I've no idea what variety the 'home-grown' plants will turn out to be.

Better start collecting those jars for chutney.

... And My First Beans And Courgettes

Yes, despite all the fits and starts and hardships in my endeavours to grow beans this year - I have finally picked my first Dwarf French Beans. Having trouble standing upright (they're meant to be self-supporting) which would be hard to do with all the recent wind doing it's best to keep them horizontal but at least the slugs haven't got to them. Not even a handful, just about enough for a salad nicoise, if not enough for a full blown meal yet but these are just the first. Hurrah!

I've also just picked another couple of courgettes and they're coming along well with at least two being picked every few days, helped by all this rain. They're certainly not going to win any prizes at the local village fete - here's the haul so far. Sadly with the rain the flowers don't look their best - the one's that don't get knocked off.

Once the tomatoes get going (there are small green ones forming) I'll be able to get the ratatouille going.