Summer is here! Good bye jet stream. Hello blue skies and bright sun – for today at least.
Harvest is also here, which is a little confusing, seasonally speaking, I’ll grant you. My bag of Anya potatoes were looking well slug munched to the point some of the haulms had no viable leaves, so I decided to de-bag them. It did look like a bit of a failure for a while, the compost was not exactly packed full of potatoey goodness. However in the end I had 870g from just 3 seed potatoes. That’s dinner sorted!
Next I went through the drying onions and shallots – they were on the top shelf of my blowaway but the tomatoes are growing up through it now, so they need to be strung up. Last weekend I made a drying rack out of bamboo and string, and today I finished loading it. We have 70 shallots (from 9-10 originals) and lots of fat overwintered onions and garlic. The summer onions are on the plot still – they have a month or two to go. Alliums, we can do.
I think the bike adds an authentic touch. There is also a basket of beetroots and eat-me-soon garlic and onions on the shelf above – I need to do something with the beetroots today… relish perhaps. I also fed everything in pots with blood fish and bone – and now the smell won’t go away…
Happy tomatoes though – these are the bush toms:
And these the vines:
And there are actual fruit forming! Following the rubbishness of last year, what with blight and all, I’m hoping these will actually give me a crop.
And lastly my last ditch attempt at cur cubits (courgettes, squash and cucumbers). I’m nothing if not determined, but this is attempt 3 – damn slugs.
Alfie has rediscovered his love of fishing toys out of water, albeit he’s not as avid a fisher as when I adopted him. I’ll add a video later – he has skillz for someone with only one arm.
