Monday 11 August 2008

It's a jungle out there!!

You turn your back for 2 weeks and things go crazy.
In fact you can hardly see the two pepper plants behind the tomatoes. Unless you delve a little deeper behind all that lush greenery and see these...And there's one more the same size (about 4/5cm long) on the other plant and lots more just beginning to show. So a difficult decision to make. Do I remove these green peppers to allow the others to develop quicker or let them ripen on the plant??
As yet the tomato plants in the back yard have only got a few fruit on them but they're producing lots more flowers now.
The tomatoes on the plot however are different beasts.
They are dripping with green tomatoes and my only worry is that we're not getting any hot 'summer' weather to get them ripening. I suppose green tomato chutney is always a tasty Plan B.The sweetcorn is looking lush and healthy.
I'm really excited at the prospect of harvesting super-fresh cobs, as the plants I grew last year didn't come to anything.
And as you can see from the photo above the plants are showing their telltale greeny-yellow tufts of cobs in the making. Knowing my luck though they'll be ready whilst we're away on holiday next month....come on sun!!
The squashes planted at the end of the sweetcorn bed are definitely on a mission of jungle greenery and I found some volunteer dwarf beans (don't know where they came from) at the other end so I've got an accidental 3 Sisters happening.

I remember reading somewhere that in August weed growth is supposed to slow down but that hasn't happened yet! Although the greenery on the right are the Pink Fir Apple potatoes (no signs of any blight yet).

So I think you can just make out the courgette plants, which are still churning out fruit but I'm afraid our lovely neighbours, who we asked to keep an eye on things whilst we were away, didn't pick any so we've ended up with these monsters.....ooops!!The smallest ones are 'normal' courgette size with the heaviest being a whopping 1.3kg.

2 comments:

Matron said...

I am having the same problem with my tomatoes too! just lack of sunshine I think. I have just started to harvest some of my sweetcorn this week, it is difficult to tell for sure if they are ripe, but the brown tassles are one sign, and then I just split open a bit of one of the tips and have a peek to be sure.

Anonymous said...

Courgettes - you can't afford to leave them alone for a minute. I've being doing my best to keep on top of things with the chutney and piccalilli but I'm fighting a losing battle.