Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Where Did The Sun Go?

Well that's the end of summer then......

At least with the return of cooler weather the lettuces, radishes and cucumbers are surviving better and worth planting again.

With the rain everything is looking pretty healty, the runner beans are getting a second flush of youth, lb's and lb's of them so far, and as a bonus, I no longer have to lug 30 gallons of water around nearly every night.

My pumpkins seems nearly ready, the big one is actually the same variety as the other, but it grew wide and they grew tall, very strange.





I thought the butternut squash were doing nothing, that I had planted them too close to everything else, but now there are squashes appearing all over the shop, mostly nowhere near the mother plant



I have an epidemic of flea beetle, they attacks the radishes, then the brocolli and I had to give up on Pak Choi completely. Once I uncovered the swede they have made a start on those too.

I have covered any heads of brocolli with fleece now to try and protect them, as you can see they wreck the heads, but at least there is is no club root.




Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Let The Courgette Battle Begin

No Picutures again, not very good at this am I.

The current picking list is:

Lettuce: Sangria, Little Gem, Red/Green Salad Bowl
Radishes: French Breakfast 3
Spring Onions: Ramrod, Ishikura
Spinach: Pass, it's green, it's taking over the world
Potatoes: Foremost
Courgette: O'Reila, Nice De Round (loads of them)
Beetroot: Detroit 2
Runner Beans: Best Of All
Carrots: Early Nantes
Tomatoes: Gardeners Delight, Gartenpearle and Golden Sunrise
Onions: Sturgeon, Red Baron
Garlic
Cucumber: Marketmore

Peppers and Chillies are doing nicely, the pumpkins are even starting to go orange as well as growing nicely, sweetcorn is nearly there and some of brocolli has started to form heads.

But the heat isn't all good, I've given up planting any more radishes in the open, they go woody before they get big enough in this heat or the tops get burnt off them, I've got some under fleece with swedes and they seems to be coping now. Pretty much all the salad bowl lettuce has bolted, but others are coming along to replace them.

It's still good to be able to pick a decent size bag of produce a day, I'm paying my dad with it for services rendered on DIY on my house and just about managing to get rid of all the courgettes.

I have some blank spots now as spuds and onions are coming up so I'm looking for replacements already.