Mid-August

The Under-Gardener (or in this case, more properly, the sous-chef!) has now peeled all the onions and I have sorted them and prepped them for the freezer. He has also now dug all the potatoes except for the fancy blue and black ones which are still flowering.  We have done spectacularly well for potatoes this year.  The four drawers in the cellar are full and we now also have four hessian sacks full in the upstairs cupboard on the landing (the only place we could think of which is dark, cool and not damp!).  There are three or so buckets of spoiled or wormy or very small potatoes.  We are processing those for the freezer or for the chooks.

The sweetcorn on the allotment has had a very hard year.  It germinated very slowly and very, very patchily.  Some of it is just starting to germinate now!  The leeks behind them, however, seem to be entirely happy and are growing slowly but cheerily.

We have LOTS of tomatoes coming along in the greenhouse.  I was looking at them yesterday and wondering what I could do with a greenhouse full of green tomatoes.  Then rememebred that it is only mid-August and they have lots and lots of time to turn red!!  We also have some very tiny capsicums nearly ready to eat.  And that strange cucurbit is a patty pan squash.  We found two huge (well, comparatively speaking) squashes hidden behind the leaves.  Much, much bigger than you're supposed to harvest them.

The late peas also seem happy.  The allotment is doing well this year.

And so is the kitchen garden.  You can almost watch that pumpkin growing - although there has only been one that has successfully set.  Still, that one should be more than enough.  The cucumber is nearly big enough to eat and there are lots more coming along behind it.  The zucchinis had *finally* started to fruit, although the watermeklon plants have yet to achieve a single flower.  The runner beans are growing.  The drying beans look amazing and the chard is delicious.

Now we really must turn our attention to the flower beds and the front porch.  And we need to sort out the patio.  I seem to have guests expected for lunch this coming Sunday.

We sat out on the patio last evening for a couple of hours, in the evening sunshine.  It was all very lovely

You'll find the most recent photos here - although not the chard and the drying beans which I forgot about