Space Turnips

The kohlrabi have been renamed 'space turnips' by friends who came over for Sunday dinner last week. There are four left growing and the remaining few in the fridge will get eaten tonight. I am still hoping to get some broccoli in but it may be a bit late...worth a go I reckon.

It looks like I am going to have a bumper crop of blackberries and thought I would give jam-making a go. I've never done it before and so it only occurred to me yesterday as I picked up some jam sugar in the supermarket that I should have saved a few of the jars that I have been conscientously putting in the recycling...D'oh!

The dwarf beans have done really well and are plentiful, and the chard is still going strong. It's only just showing signs of bolting so I will cut it back later and I think it will survive a while longer.

The sunflowers are all exceedingly tall and robust. I will hazard a guess that they will be flowering by the end of the week.

Sam and I went to pick the cucumber yesterday, and found four fully grown! What a lovely surprise. And a big fat marrow, ripe for stuffing.

The pumpkins are all growing green and round, as are the tigerella tomatoes. I think I may need to find a good recipe for green tomato chutney. If anyone has one they would like to send me it would be much appreciated!

No runner beans as yet but I've had a few more broad beans and peas. Next year I will make sure I do some more concerted companion planting so the broad beans don't get quite so much of an all-out attack by the black fly that have almsot defeated them this year.

It was Lammas yesterday and, as I have written elsewhere, this is the time to celebrate the first harvest, acknowledge the successes of the year, give thanks and look to seeds of the future.

I have achieved more than I hoped with my first go at growing vegetables. I feel very lucky to have had such a positive experience, which has also benefited Sam no end. Even though he is, of course, far more concerned about playing rugby than weeding.

I still have to clear the ground on the other side of the path. This will be my big job of the winter. I have some ideas about what I am going to plant there. I am also going to build a den for Sam. And it will be big enough for Mummy to crawl into as well, if I feel like hiding... I have also got some ideas for how and what I will plant in the veg patch next year...more on that another time.