Chilly & frosty

The last few weekends we've been up at the allotment it's been really frosty. It makes the usually soggy looking vegetation magical with their sparkling jewel-like, frosted droplets frozen to the leaves. The brassicas are looking especially bling...

The Globe artichokes... And the fennel too...

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!!

Batten down the hatches

We went to the allotment today for a couple hours weeding and tending as it was dry, and made sure everything was securely tied down (especially the tomato shelter) and wouldn't blow away in the gale force winds that are battering us at the moment. Not very mid-summer like is it?!? Hmmmm....