Green manure

In the glorious warm sunshine on Saturday I weeded one of the ex-onion beds that hadn't been re-planted with anything and sowed a green manure - Phaeceila 'something'.

It has really cool shaped seeds (if you can see in the photo above). Shame my camera can't take a better close up.

Post holiday bellies and leftovers

It's all very nice being on holiday and going out for dinner every night and eating lovely food but the great thing about being home is cooking in your own kitchen.

The 'ripe' tomatoes (or un-blighted parts of) were simmered with garlic, onions, anchovies and a few glugs of olive oil to become a pasta sauce base for a future quick dinner.

I thinned out the fennel and used the tender 'micro' ?!? plants in a creamy, mustardy, left-over-roast-chicken and almond bake creation with rice.

Some more of the ripe tomatoes, leftover roast chook with various other home grown veggies went into a curry (sadly the chickpeas are tinned).And then this wee beautie today went into a pork pot roast with some rescued windfallen bramleys...yum yum!

I think they look like trees when cut in half.

The Verdict

Whilst not a total disaster the plots haven't quite escaped the blight and the slugs whilst we've been away but then given what we heard about the continuous, torrential rain, that can only be expected.

Rescued the tomatoes off the bedraggled looking plants and sorted into 2 piles - blighted and not-yet-blighted. Looks like a bumper year for green tomato chutney! The tomato plants at home are still blight-free still so I'm hopeful of some proper ripe tomatoes to eat.

Although very mildewed the winter squash have been very productive and there are a lot of fruits of almost harvestable size. I'm particularly impressed with the 'Thelma Saunders' Sweet Potato squash from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ as it's been prolific! And in the photo above you can see that there is new fresh growth on the courgettes but I think this might be their last encore of the season.The slugs have been quite well behaved for slugs...but they've removed any trace of what should have been my get-them-in-quick late sowing of dwarf french beans (you can just see a couple of seedlings hanging on in the bottom left), desecrated the pak choi seedlings again... and they've started attacking the red cabbage although they're of a decent size to withstand a fair amount of munching.

And the best homecoming 'present' was eating these 2 lovely specimens...

At least the dismal weather stopped them from ripening too fast whilst we were away and means we can eat all the rest (another 10) yeay!!

Whilst I've been mostly...

...doing this for the last 2 weeks on a very small Greek island, the plots have been left to their own devices with the occasional visit from our friends T&I and S&A.

We got back yesterday evening and as it was dark by the time we unpacked I'm having to wait until after work today to see what the verdict is.

Will the dreaded blight have decimated all the plentiful green tomatoes and left a soggy mush instead?

Will I have to lug home several huge 'marrows'?

Will I be rewarded with lots of ripe sweetcorn to harvest?

Will I have been spared a slug onslaught in my absence?

Let's hope the answers to the above are no, no, yes and yes (in that order).