Well, isn’t it just our luck that the summer that arrived here while we were away in May/June then departed again during a good chunk of this month! Chilly, windy and wet best describes the weather we had for the beginning of the month, meaning that we have seen far less progress with the veg beds than we would have hoped.
Now discouraged in the least were the sunflowers, however.
Could that be any more cheerful? The wind did give them a few problems, we have had to re-set their stakes a few times, and even then it must be said that by now they are all leaning at different angles, but have been looking lovely and bright and happy, and all now setting seed which is excellent!
We have had a couple more small courgettes, but have also learned a lesson about planting them quite as close both to each other, and to the potato crop, as we did this time round, as lack of good ventilation around the stems is meaning some powdery mildew, slow ripening of the fruits, and also a tendency for the flowers to not drop off as they should, go soggy and cause blossom end rot. We’re mitigating some of the issues by being careful to check for flowers needing removal, they are being fed weekly being careful to avoid leaves and stems and not water too close to the base of the main stem, but there isn’t much more we can do. The sunnier warmer weather towards the end of the month has definitely helped as well, and we're hopeful that August is going to be an excellent courgette harvesting month! The weather has also delayed the tomatoes massively - there is a lot of fruit set, but it's just not ripening. I suspect when it does start going we're going to get an awful lot of tommies all in one go, so I'm standing by ready to roast, sauce or whatever to preserve them best for future use!
The big news this month has been cucumbers. I have a vague note that we have grown them before, but neither of us can recall actually eating home grown ones, so I wonder if in fact they all got slugged/snailed or whatever when we had a previous attempt. This time we have been mostly effective in persuading the molluscs to leave them be - we did have to do one re-sowing as we only ended up with two viable plants from the 4 we originally sowed, but that second sowing gave us another 2 plants and should extend our cropping season as well, so all good. I have to say too that they are a winner of a crop - they just demand feeding weekly, and plenty of water, and are now producing regular and utterly delicious cucumbers, far smaller than shop bought ones, but SO much tastier!
Our one chilli plant has been flowering happily with the most gorgeous purple flowers, and is now setting fruit too - that joins the toms, 'gettes and cukes with a weekly feed but is otherwise fairly undemanding, and looks like it will give us a nice crop of beautiful mild flavoursome chillies too, all being well. It is a "Hungarian Black" - from seed gifted to us by an old neighbour (who commented at the time of the handover that writing "Hungarian Black" on a plain white envelope and sticking it through our letter box made her feel like a drug dealer!) and is the most gorgeous plant as well, green leaves with a faint purple tracery all over them, so pretty!
Not quite garden news (and no photos, because a lot of this happened while I was elsewhere!) it has also reached the time of year for some foraging to start too. We started with plums - the first small batch made plum sauce, which has already proved to be a tasty addition to a stir-fry. Then MrEH went out for a whole load more and made a batch of plum jam, and another of plum chutney, both of which are now stashed away in the cupboard. We're planning one final trawl for a few more plums, and another batch of the sauce although I want to do it slightly differently this time round to get a darker, stickier result with more sweetness to it. If there are enough then there may be the opportunity to stew some for crumble, too. Still to come are blackberries and apples of course - more crumbles there hopefully!
Robyn
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