The Frantic Gardeners’ Blog

i think there should be more of them Had lots of family visiting today, and niece in particular veru enthusiastic about picking and choosing veg for dinner. still loads of french beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and chard. curry was a hit also made a pasta bake [spares of each into the freezer for when not eating so much of the same!]. ANother crumble - raspberry and apple. the pears are getting there now as well, so hoping to harvest them in september.

The watermelons still growing, tho i am not hopeful!

We have a v weird courgette. must post a piccie of it. it should be a yellow parador, but appears to have gone all mottledy. must be some kind of virus or reversion. when i print a pic, if anyone reads the blog they might comment on it. the others on that plant also similar.

Starting to harvest the runner beans. they are very prolific cropping and taste delicious. The cobra are pretty much finished now after the picking this weekend of french beans, but still blauhilde.

The grapes in the consercvatory are doing well. they take a while to ripen as such an old variety, but the kids couldn’t help picking.

Looking round the veg patch, we need to consider doing a big tidy up so that in sept can get ready to plant garlic and broad beans

we still have an abundance of courgettes, french beans and potatoes, but joined with an abundance of tomatoes, red peppers and aubergines. this is leading us to have a very mediteranean diet currently, with lasagne, pasta bake, stirfries, frittata, and aubergine moussaka. we are vegetarian so this is a good healthy diet for many meals we are nearly self sufficient, tho obv bought in pasta and eggs! [we must keep chickens next year i think] . To supplement this we have a sensible amount of swiss chard and salad leaves, a sprinkling of carrots.

The runner beans that i was moaning about seem to be starting show an extremely heavy crop. must look back at the packet to see what they were as i would highly recommend them. also setting them off so late seems perfect as they will be taking over as the french beans come to an end. Although there are still armfuls of french beans, some of the leaves are yellowing - particularly on cobra - i think the crazy weather pattern has ade them thinkit is autumn. Usually they go on for a bit longer. I have frozen loads after cutting and blanching, so our glut will last into the winter. I have also frozen quite a number of lasagna and moussaka and pasta bake with our glut crops so that we have ready made meals for the winter as well. I have also made a big vat of pasta sauce to dip into over the winter too [frozen in 4 person family portions]

Harvesting apples have made crumble out of the ones where cut some wasp damage out of - still yummy! harvesting some raspberries as well - though the daughters tend to harvest tem on sight, so i have to be quick!

As i type there is a thrush hopping around on the patio. one got trapped in the greenhouse earlier in the week, and going to close the windows and vents i had to get it to hop towards the door. luckilly out without a problem.

Actually, this isn’t all we are harvesting and eating, but we are harvesting armfuls of beans, potatoes and courgettes so this is making up the preponderance of our meals!

So far this week we have eaten: potatoe, courgette and french bean frittata with home grown salad leaves and tomatoes from the greehouse. We have had courgette mousaka - which was v delicious with the tomato sauce made from our own tomatoes, onions, garlic and the couple of peppers that are ripe enough . when we had bought quiche we had french beans from the garden, home grown salads and tomatoes and potatoes.

We have therefore harvested a lot of salad leaves and tomatoes too, a couple of ripened peppers [tasty grill] rainbow chard [stirfry with courgettes, french beans…]

Also harvesting are some apples that seem to be ripe. we have3 lost quite a lot of apples to wasp damage this year, so think tht next year we should probably have one of those fake wasp nests to see if they are protective. Nearly ready are autumn ripening raspberries - yum yum!

The chickpea crop has worked! it isn’t very big or exciting, but was a trial in the greenhouse with dried chickpeas rather than with bought seeds, so to get any crop i think is doing well. Excitements of excitements we have 2 watermelons growing! they are tennis ball size so I am not sure they will make it to harvest but again, they missed on being potted up properly whilst we were in canada so might do better next year

for disappointments - runner beans, only 2 plants germinated and waiting to see what kind of crop we get. the melons haven’t done anything either

nearly ready - aubergines, there seems to be lots of them coming along, peppers, raspberries and looks like a good crop of sweetcorn and squashes seem to be on the way.

so we are v happy with our garden currently, tho abundance of courgettes, potatoes and freinch beans, there is also a good harvest of rainbow chard, salad leaves, tomatoes and a smattering of carrots and the odd final brocolli to boost it.

we got back a week ago having been away for 3 weeks visiting relatives and seeing my cousin get married as well as visiting the rockies. Before we left I did a pretty good weed of the veg beds, put a straw mulch around the corn and squashes and topped up around the beans and potatoes and hoped for the best. My DH also bodged up the auto waterer for the greenhouse, but so late we didn’t have much of a chance to assess how much it was delivering.

whilst we were away we had some friends and some family come every couple of days for the rabbits and troubleshoot the veg, and they were told to pick whateve they wanted that was ready - it was mostly courgettes, salads and tomatoes.

when we returned, we came back to a complete jungle! harvesting the desperate things about to go over gave us several kg of different french beans, courgettes and escaped-to-become-marrows, potatoes, aubergines, several different brocolli, romanescu and caulifower, chard and tomatoes. it was a real glut.

we still haven’t managed to weed more than a small bit, as loads of nettles, so can’t rope in kids to help .

since then, continued to harvest chard and beans in great quantities, and courgettes [a base for many meals!] carrots both orange and purple, lots of rainbow chard, potatoes and tomatoes and salad leaves and a few aubergines.

i can see the squashes and sweetcorn are also doing well. there are a few more brassicas to harvest and the garlic. the broad beans are done. in the greenhouse the peppers are starting to go red, and there are loads of them.

i can see tho that melons and watermelons are not so successful.