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Archive for July, 2007

Poppy Visitor

After an entire packet of common red field poppy seeds failed to produce a single flower, this pink poppy appeared in another part of the plot of its own accord. I realised too late what it was, having weeded up several others (one of the perils of being a novice) from the root vegetable bed. [...]

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More courgettes, including some whoppers: Tondo di Piacenza, Defender and Jemmer. I found a strange small round yellow courgette that had gone rotten inside and wondered whether the Tondo and Jemmer varieties had started cross-polinating! The biggest, toughest courgette I peeled, seeded and grated to make this:

It’s the Chocolate Zucchini Cake from the infamous courgette [...]

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It seems that we probably do have blight (thank you Trik for your comment on the previous post), as do lots of other people at our site, if a quick stroll around this morning is anything to go by. But the potatoes on the end of the dodgy plants looked, and tasted, absolutely fine. We [...]

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Planting the courgettes rather closely together has given them plenty of hiding places. The Tondo di Piacenza round courgettes are suddenly getting very large.

We’ll be producing courgette footballs soon.
The King Edwards are not ready yet, but there’s worrying development.
Is this blight?

To end on a lighter note, I took this scary rabbit picture at a posh [...]

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We planted out our runner beans on Monday in a late evening visit to the plot.

These were grown from beans I saved last year, which were grown from beans my father saved the previous year. I’m not sure of the variety other than it’s an old English sort of bean.
At the weekend we treated ourselves [...]

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Blackcurrants

As with much of our produce so far this season, the blackcurrant yield has provided quality rather than quantity.
Here were some fat, juicy blackcurrants from earlier this month.

On Wednesday evening, we picked just over 300g of them.

Rather than eat the lot at once in a pudding, we opted for making a large pot of jam.

(OK, [...]

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We ate the first broad beans yesterday, and the first reasonably sized courgettes.

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I’m cheating a bit with this post, I admit, but today I photographed a few exhibits at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show that I’d love to share.

Medwyn Williams’ onions. Check out his leeks! And everything else in this stunning veg display.

McBeans Orchids in Floral Marquee 1 (apologies for the lack of specific info - [...]

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I picked the first courgettes today (Defender and Tondo di Piacenza), small as they are, to try to encourage more growth in the plants, also bringing home a couple of onions and some raspberries (the raspberry canes are growing so vigorously that I struggled to get to them).
A rather large radish to the left of [...]

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