After two months of sun sun sun, we have rain rain rain!   The weather suggests drizzle for the rest of the day followed by normal sun tomorrow and high humidity.  The rain is most welcome and the sun to follow will be nice too, but a little less humidity would finish it all off nicely.   It is nice this morning waking up to rain, we have the doors open in the kitchen with the rain outside and us dry indoors.     It would be nice if the rain would be more than just drizzle, would make everything look and feel much more dramatic.  But as it is, we have rain which is the main thing.  The lawn is probably loving it.

This is all about to change as we get ready to plant some of the autumn and winter plants, in particular winter onions, some more peas and broad beans.  In the meantime, we have the tomatoes attempting to invade squares.  The onions which we planted quite late are probably as large as they are going to get so I will give them until their leaves die down more and then we will have either small onions or large spring onions!  Speaking of which, we have three squares of spring onions and none of them have done too well and still have a long way to go.  Various salad and raddish squares have bolted and need to be pulled up.  We don’t eat a lot of salad leaves and so I will not plant any more this year and I think for next I will plant a lot less.   The sweetcorn is large but I have yet to notice any corn growing inside any of them, but we shall see.

The beans are all great and the courgette plants (one in four squares here plus another one behind the sweetcorn in a pot) are doing very well.  I need to dilute some water with liquid worm feed which last year really did make the courgettes grow.

We have had no rain for nearly two months now even though other parts of the country have been flooded.  Infact at work just 17 miles away we had a good hour’s worth of really strong rain and yet not a drop back home.  The grass is a brown colour and I think the whole salad/raddish bolting was caused when we went away for a weekend and were unable to water the squares.  Before we left I soaked them and I think that was really a bad move, whoops.

I notice we have carrot problems which is a shame as we have just started pulling them although I think the actual carrot under the soil is fine.  Looking in my book “The Vegetable & Herb Expert” by Dr. D G Hessayon (a great series of books these “Expert” series) it looks to be Carrot-Willow Aphid, greenfly.  For some reason our garden is covered in blackfly and it looks like greenfly too.  I don’t believe I have seen so many before, I wonder if this is to do with the constant hot and sometimes very humid weather.   The distorted leaves suggest aphids which it goes on to warn about the more serious transmission of motley dwarf virus which discolours the leaves.  It goes on to say growth will be distorted if the attack is in the seedling stage, good fortune for us then that it has just taken hold now.

I suppose it is all a bit late now to do anything, but the whole blackfly, aphid thing is starting to get on my nerves and so plan to spray everything with water and washing up liquid daily in order to stop these things building up.

Despite the black fly which seems to be covering our garden like a blanket, these french beans are growing so well.  I didn’t notice any beans yesterday and yet today it seems it is covered in them with a lot of them ready to be picked.   We have never grown french beans before but it does make a nice change from the normal runner beans (we have them too) and much quicker to prepare when cooking too.  The white flowers of these mixed well with the red from the running beans and they all continue to put on a good show.

We planted peas a bit late so it was always interesting to see what we would get and it has been a bit unfortunate for them.   Firstly due to me not implementing vertical growing to any great degree meant that the pea plants that could have grown up and up and produced loads ended up meanly on the ground.  Secondly, and also due to me not implementing vertical growing, the tomato plants in the the next squares have grown all over the place and over powered the peas a bit too much.  Shame on me then for not doing it all correctly as by the amount everything has grown, if it was able to climb upwards then we would be laughing.   Instead, we are laughing but in a slightly different way as the photo of the peas shows our harvest!  They did well against everything but in the end the tomatoes over powered them.   These plants will come out now and over the next weeks we will plant some more for a quick last minute harvest.

So as you see, the tomatoes have grown really well all over the place and are sporting loads of green tomatoes which sometime in August must turn red and be ready to either eat raw or added to cooking.   These two plants came from a bloke off Freecycle and I think I must keep in contact with him in  case he grows loads again next year and needs to get rid of the seedlings.   My worry at the moment is tomato blight as we have had no rain for well over a month (possibly two months even) which is fantastic after the last two years worth of bad summers, but with the watering and high humidity I know I am asking for trouble here.  Fingers crossed.   Now… if only I had implemented that vertical growing…….

We have had plenty of radish and lettuce from the square foot garden, but both of those get a bit boring day after day.  The harvest of a “proper” vegetable I would call the carrots, you can do so many things with carrots.   We have three squares of carrots all planted two weeks after each other and we have just started picking the first square.   Last night we included them in lasagna and  tonight we had them grated in meatballs.  T&J ran out to pick them this evening and even, although they didn’t know it, eat them as part of the meatballs.  These are small carrots, a globe variety that is well suited for the shallow soil of the raised bed, 16 per square.

These were early potatoes but we planted them a month late and so it made sense that we dug them up a month late too.   After the initial planting the whole potato stuff is a bit dull and watering tends to be left to me once T&J have done the planting.  They are always wanting to know how they are doing and when they can be dug up and it is now really a yearly thing to look forward to.   The whole digging for treasure and wondering just what you will find is something then that we look forward to and I get plenty of help digging, cleaning and then eating.

This year we have used to purpose made potato sacks instead of the large flower pots of previous years.   It would be interesting to see how we had done and initial digging showed no potatoes which got us all rather worried.  Digging deeper and we were soon finding small’ish new potatoes and soon had our bowl filled up.  On the way Jack made friends with a woodlouse which pleased him as it tickled him while walking along his arm.

Once dug, the final job of cleaning and an excuse to cool down playing with water too.

It has taken a couple of years to get to this stage, but this year the passion flower has finally taken off and trying to climb up the fence.  To give it a bit of a helping hand  I have put something on the fence for it to climb up with the idea of it covering the fence over the years and making “the bit down the side” look a lot more attractive.

I was pleased to see loads of new flowers appearing on the courgettes, but less so of all the blackfly all over it.  A closer look at other plants and it seems like a huge invasion of these things has hit the garden!   I notice ants running up and down the beans but they have got their work cut out keeping up with it all.   I gave the whole lot a good spray of water and washing up liquid and will repeat this each day until things look a bit better.

After a good month of blue skies, hot weather and sun sun sun… we had two or three days of rain and wind.   The result is a sudden growth on everything and a bit of wind damage.   The sweetcorn shows no signs of any corn inside, although I’m not fully sure when they are meant to so I’m not too concerned.  They keep growing and one of them I have had to tie to a stick to keep it upright.  The water has given the courgette plant a lot of think about and that is starting to use all it’s four squares allotted to it, plus put on a display of flowers too which means courgettes will soon be on their way.

We have a number of empty squares now which are waiting for me to find time to replant them.  At the same time I will top up the soil too with a new mix of peat, compost and vermiculite.  Over the months the level of the soil has dropped quite a bit and I’m glad I planted globe varieties of carrots otherwise there would not be much to have when the time comes.

The big thing to know is that I really should had done the vertical part of growing a lot better and by the book.   The tomatoes are over grown and by clumped up and I just hope that the millions of tomatoes that it seems to be growing all survive and don’t get too damp and warm and just rot.  The poor peas are swamped by the tomatoes and while I have seen a couple of pea pods I fear that may be it.    All of this could had been avoided if I had done the vertical supports correctly and we would then have a wall of peas and tomatoes and beans.   Next year…..

We have had a very hot July so far which has meant watering first thing in the morning and in the early evening too which has given steady growth on all plants.   Over the weekend we were away so I gave extra water on the Friday and hoped all would be ok.  I wonder if that was a good idea as I notice now a lot of the raddish and rocket has bolted and gone to seed.  A bit of a pity.    I am sure that must be part of the reason for all this.

In the meantime, everything else is growing.  The two tomato plants are desperate to be tied up a bit more as they are starting to swamp the other squares.  I spot new small green tomatoes each day, tomorrow I will tie it all up.   This shall rescue the carrot squares around the tomatoes.   I notice pea pods starting, and the courgette plant has two flowers plus is going to swamp all it’s four squares within no time.

The potatoes need digging up out of the pots.  I need to work out just how to get them out from under the bean poles….