Attentive readers may have noticed that there was no growing update for the month of June. We just about managed to get on top of things in the garden and at the allotment, but unfortunately I simply ran out of time to write the post. We were busy every weekend and we spent much of our free time during the week watering, weeding and planting. By the time I had enough spare time to write the post it was so far into July that I thought we may as well combine the two months into one post.
June was a very warm and sunny month, and although this meant a lot of watering to keep the plants happy, they benefited enormously from the good weather and grew rapidly. July has been a mixed bag, but generally cooler and wetter than June was.
In May’s update we reported how other commitments had meant that we had fallen behind schedule with our growing. As I alluded to in the introduction to this post, we managed to just about get on top of everything in June. In the first couple of weeks of the month we got our main crop potatoes into the ground and all of the runner beans and the garden peas out. We also filled the remainder of the miscellaneous bed at the allotment with tomato, courgette and squash plants.
We picked a weekend in July to go away camping, which naturally meant it poured with rain. The next time we went to the allotment it had transformed! Young weeds had shot up everywhere and the plot was in desperate need of hoeing. But more impressively, the squashes and courgettes appeared to have doubled in size in a few days!
A dense mass of curcubit! Squash and courgette plants taking over the allotment.
A happy courgette plant at the allotment – must be all of the manure.
We’ve harvested a few courgettes and there look to be plenty more on the way. More excitingly we also look to be in for a decent squash harvest. We’re growing several varieties this year. The plants have sprawled into each other and become a dense mass of curcubit, so it’s hard to trace each flower back to its original plant. But judging by the shapes of the young fruits and female flowers, it looks like we have some young cushaw and sweet dumpling squashes pollinated and maturing.
A young squash fruit at the allotment. Judging by the shape I think this is a Cushaw squash, but I haven’t traced the vine back to its source yet to check.
Another young squash fruit at the allotment. I think this one is a Sweet Dumpling.
Our tomato plants have also grown a little disorderly, but they are yielding fruits, so we’re not complaining. Sticking at the allotment, the main crop potatoes that we buried deeply under ground are well and truly up and looking strong. We planted two heritage varieties at the allotment – ‘Blue Salad’ and ‘Pink Fir Apple’. We’ve never tried either before and we are quite looking forward to them. Our potatoes in the garden are also looking healthy and we should be in for a good crop this year.
Also looking good is our asparagus bed at the allotment. I was a little concerned when a couple of spears shot up within a few weeks of planting them – but no others followed. However, we now have several very small spears protruding through the soil throughout the bed. Not looking quite so good were our pea beans in the garden. They were absolutely ravaged by slugs and snails, and so we had to plant some replacements. This has set us back a little, but the ones at the allotment are more mature.
The 2017 Martock Field Bean harvest.
We’ve harvested our Martock Field Beans from the garden. Last year we left them to dry and then rehydrated them over the winter for stews. This year we ate them fresh and quite enjoyed them. They were just like broad beans. In the space left by the Martock Field Beans we’ve now planted some left over tomatoes and a courgette plant to benefit from the nitrogen the beans will have fixed into the soil.
Runner beans in the garden.
In July we’ve also started harvesting the runner beans from the garden, and the Boddington’s Soup Peas are now mostly dry and ready for storage. We’ve also had a pleasant surprise in the legumes bed in the garden (the bed formerly known as ‘the pumpkin patch’), it appears we’ve got oca growing! We grew the South American tubers in that bed last year, and must have left some in the ground. We haven’t harvested any yet (they’d be too small), but the tops look exactly like they did last year.
Unexpected oca! We must have left some in the ground last year.
The fruit trees in the garden are abundant with fruits. We’ve harvested greengages and plums, and there are currently plenty of apples on the trees. Our young potted fruit trees have a few apples, but the big tree is covered in them.
A young apple on one of our potted trees.
The big apple tree in the garden. We should be in for a lot of apples this autumn.
We’ve also been harvesting our soft fruits – redcurrants, strawberries and blueberries. I think that just about concludes June and July’s update. If you can’t wait until the end of August for an update follow us on Instagram to see what we’re up to: