After the attack of the little black beetles the other month, the remaining carrots have survived under the netting and are doing well. There are gaps which I have previously resown and some have come up, but there still remains further gaps. Most of the re-sown carrots have been multicoloured ones and it was quite exciting to see the tops of some of these showing.

I have filled the gaps with reliable Nantes and I have also sown loads of small plugs with carrots which are undercover at home and I’ll transplant once they start showing. I’m sure people tell you not to do this but I thought I would give it a go.

It was a busy weekday evening visit with Tom. I weeded the huge amount of bind weed while he picked broad beans and did some watering. Most of the broad beans have been been picked and we took the chance to cut down some of the old plants with the expectation I’ll do the rest at the weekend. The over wintered broad beans were much better and so I’ll probably only do those next time (minimal hassle, maximum harvest).

We picked all the peas that we could leaving some small pods on the plant. I thought we had grown loads of plants but I think we will double that next year. Everyone joined in podding peas later on that evening.

Courgettes, both yellow and green, have finally started to do something with both plants having lots of small fruit starting to form. Butternut squash and pumpkin though both haven’t really done anything for months and are still just small plants.

Mid week we bought back home:

• broad beans
• chard
• beetroot
• turnip
• peas

While the yellow beans and rhubarb looked like they were about ready.

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At the weekend I took the purple sprouting plants to the plot, they have been suffering a bit still being in small pots in the heat. I put them with the rest of the cabbage like things which also meant raising up the netting using the blue water pipe that was given to me.

I pruned the gooseberry bushes by around five leaves while also picking gooseberries as I went along. I thought there would only be one or two but I managed to get most of a punnet worth of them. Gooseberry bushes are a bit of a challenge and rather spiky.

Spotted loads of cucumbers on plants and I need to work out if they are ready for picking.

I was able to take home:

• last lot of broad beans, the plants have now all been pulled up
• first lot of yellow french beans
• a surprisingly large amount of gooseberries

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