7 - 8th July

By now I am usually picking courgettes which have passed the early fruiting stage and have settled down into a regular production supply. At lunchtime though I was planting out the last of the courgettes, a few pumpkins and one more butternut squash. I noticed that of the courgettes already planted, all are establishing and 2 or 3 are beginning to thrive and go for it. The squashes have settled in now and are beginning to sprawl and the sweet corn are thick and sturdy and reaching for the sky. I am still impressed and amazed by both the onions and by the weeds that have shot up in the gap between the membranes in section 6. The cornflowers look like they will be in bloom soon but the teasels, despite a lush and large leaf spread, have not begun their upward growth unlike the ones I see by the road side on a motorway roundabout I pass twice a day. The carrots are pushing up on their protective fleece which I must fit properly before it becomes pointless being there if it isn’t protecting. The garlic still look thin and pale so I’m not setting my hopes on a bumper crop from them – I still have most of last year’s hanging up in the conservatory. Perhaps in our new kitchen they will be used up. I came away from the allotment with a courgette plant which had no space to go into, but I will keep hold of it as the 2 pumpkins look so weak I think I’ll lose one and then the courgette can go into its space.

8^th July

I returned to the allotment to find that yes, I had lost one of the pumpkins, and the other 2 as well, so in went the courgette and the 2 extra cucumbers that I had bought. The sweet peppers are not looking too good. They are stunted, pale and scrawny. I didn’t get round to making little holes filled with manure for them as a concentrated plot of fertile soil for each of them, maybe that has something to do with it, or the fact that they became a bit pot bound, or that they have been exposed to the weather unlike last year when they were in containers in my garden. Mind you, we have had some still and scorching weather, akin to their native land.