Keep it going

 My gardening post this month is in the stages of petering out in the veg plot. It has been hard to keep everything efficiently watered but I am still calling it a success. 

The runner beans are still producing beans which we try and eat as we pick them although I have frozen quite a few batches. They need constant picking to keep them going. The French beans were OK to start with and then a rogue guinea fowl kept getting in and eating them. In the end they were little sticks in the ground but I had a good amount before he (?) got to them.

The tomatoes have been OK. Not as many as last year because the plants looked so stressed under the heatwave conditions but the ones we did have were fantastic. The variety is called Marmande. It has an orange flesh, hardly any seeds and the sweetest flavour. 

We have picked our fifth cucumber. The cucumbers seem to have faired better than anything else in the hot greenhouse. For fear of sounding like a right old woman, they taste like cucumbers used to taste! This is my last little pick before I tidy down in the greenhouse for winter.

Even my courgettes were a bit slow and let's face it, if you grow veg, you can grow copious amounts of courgettes. I do have my ego to blame here through because I let one grow to a huge weight to win a veg category at our village show which slowed the plant down and discouraged further fruits to appear - lesson learnt!

The best part of the veg patch has been the fruit. In total we had 7.5kg of strawberries and we are in the midst of a raspberry fest from the Autumn raspberries. It always feels such a great thing to grow because they are so expensive in the shops. I have had so many that I even made a batch of wine. That colour :)

Success has also been huge with my sweet pea fence. In some respects I created a monster which needed constant picking in order to keep it going but it smells sooooo good.

The rest of the floral garden is going well. I tried on my initial plan for the garden planting to ensure that there would be interest all year round. My flower vase which has been on my table since I put daffodils in it in March has been a constant show of what has been flowering week in week out. This week we have moved from the purple of the sweet peas to warm oranges. 

More alstromeria, dahlias and fennel this week.

These cranberry cosmos are destined for next week's vase.

In Beth's Wedding field she has the most amazing dahlias. Nothing like the kind of thing I grow. Huge colourful heads of all shapes and sizes for weddings and events. Sometimes she pops in the studio with a stem that has broken off too short for a bouquet and I stare at the shape of the petals in wonder. She arrived with these two beauties exclaiming they were too yellow for the wedding order. Yes please! The huge one is called cafe au lait.

I think I can keep the lettuce production going for a little while longer and then I will put the whole lot to bed soon.

 Did you folks grow anything good this year?

Jo xxxxx