It’s only been hot summer weather for the last week, but that’s enough for words like “heatwave”, “drought” and “global warming” all to be featured in the news – I’m sure we can summarise it with just saying “it’s summer time”. It didn’t last long, it was back to winter time by the weekend but knowing this would happen I made sure I made the most of the evenings.

The potato plants have really died down, the row of (what I expect) are charlottes were due to be dug up last week but we had enough from the first row. I’ll have to dig these in a couple of weeks or so, and then it will be time to dig up the last two rows (would be ready mid August, 100 days after planting). The space from the first row allowed me to plant out a couple of kale plants that have been waiting to go in. I quickly covered them with netting to stop the butterflies landing on them. I grew these at home last year as they are a crop that you pick and need to use straight away, but I discovered they kept in a jar of water, like cut flowers, for a good week, so up on the plot they are this year where there is more space.

At home, I pulled up the peas which had died down. We planted double the number of plants from last year but got less of a harvest. I blame the potatoes which have grown to a massive size this year and swamped a lot of things in the garden (there are leeks somewhere….). Also growing a lot are the various squash plants in the garden, all have promising small fruits but I’ve yet to see one actually grow. At the plot we have squash plants and for the first time they are doing really well, all the prep on the bed months beforehand seems to have paid off. This time we do have at least one Patty Pan growing, millions of courgettes (nearly 1kg each week from two plants) and ridge cucumbers. Very different to last year when everything like that struggled.

I tied the tomatoes up again, both at home and at the plot. Plenty of promising looking tomatoes that just need to grow a bit more and turn red (or yellow). I’ve spotted some carrots than can be pulled, and the french beans at home will be ready at some point this coming week.

The spring planted onions never really took off and for some reason I didn’t by many sets to plant, so the harvest off of that was not great. I pulled most of them up, mainly because I knew rain was due and after all the hot weather drying them off it would be a shame to get them wet again. I left some in the ground for another time, mostly ones grown from seed. The seed ones that I did pick were not too bad looking, not massive but not tiny either. I have plenty of onion seed left so I’ll do a mixture of seeds and sets again later this year for autumn planted onions. This has left an empty (and weedy) bed which, once cleared, will have the purple sprouting plants go in, along with swede.

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