for the garden blog

way late blogging, but the host has been very variable so i hven’t had access either.

so in summary. we have done particularly well with butternut squash and the festival squash [or was it celebration?] and 1 courgett plant has been great, 1 ok and nothing from the other. the pumpkins don’t seem to have done anything at all. The festival squash has loved rampaging across a trellis that was supposed to have peas on it.

The sweetcorn was OK, but not brill, but have just harvested the now dried out strawberry popcorn sweetcorn, so will give that a go later on.

The runners have bean OK and a good crop of broad beans, given their late start, but nothing much from french beans and peas disasterous – but they did coincide with a lot of missed attention, so probably down to us.

the onions and shallot harvest was good, but the garlic non-existant – not sure what happened to that.

the brassicas are still doing well, as sequentially cropping. the romanescu is a particularly smelly plant, and since we placed in the fruit bed near the house, are garden has smelled of cabbages all summer, so won’t do that again! they have had both large and small cabbage white caterpillars. The younger daughter has happily called them snakes and fed as many as possible to the waiting goldfish in the pond – so organic control there.

Potatoes were put in late, and since no sign of blight yet are still growing, and we will do a harvest later.

We had a surprisingly good carrot harvest considering the overgrowth with weeds. Both daughters have been particularly happy with this, mainly eating them raw.

the figs had a good harvest, and we had a few fruit on this years planting apple [but didn’t let it do too much so establishes. Ditto strawberries. the grapes on our vine are just ready to harvest, and we are harvesting bunches as we use them.

care of the greenhouse could def be better, so no aubergines, few chillis but did get some toms.

A lot of things suffered due to pressures at work really, and these aren’t likely to let of much next year. I think we will concetrate on just a few things next year, and half the patch perhaps, covering the rest wiht cardboard to minimise weeds.

pictures to follow