Big catch up!

Hard to know where to start in terms of recent plantings and plantings out, cropping, greenhouse activities!

Cropping: we've started eating Arran Pilot first early potatoes - large crop of good sized potatoes and such a good flavour. Definitely one to grow next year.

The red chard we picked last week was really good and we're expecting a steady crop through the summer and beyond. We had our first meal using broad beans today and are very pleased.

Strawberries have been lovely and look set to give more fruit for at least another week, overlapping with the raspberries which will soon come into their own. Along with blackcurrants, the fruit hedge, tayberries, Worcester berries and others which we need to check names of!

The rhubarb was first off the locks and we had several cuttings of stems and froze what we couldn't eat immediately. 

The asparagus was somewhat disappointing except we have to realise that the roots were disturbed when we made the move from Windsor Avenue to Victoria Road. It looks like we'll have to wait a year until we can really crop the asparagus again, so we need to keep the raised beds weed free, manured and generally well-tended. 

Up and coming: peas of several varieties have really grown well this year and we look forward to enjoying them - peas, sugar snaps, climbing French peas .....

The Cobra climbing French beans are finally growing quite vigorously so we expect good things from them sooner rather than later.

The beetroot are forming nicely so won't be too long now. The variety of Action F1 should be eaten small so we will - and try also to re-sow over the coming weeks and months.

The courgette plants - Romanesco and Gold Rush - are growing well so should provide eatable fruits within the next ten days. Similarly, the cucumber plants look very healthy so we'll keep an eye on those.

The squash plant needs to be accompanied by the two remaining plants in the greenhouse so that we can be sure of a big crop of Hunter F1 butter nut squash - which incidentally have really good keeping qualities.

The netting seems very effective over the cabbage, sprouts, kale and purple sprouting. Hopefully we can look forward to good crops of each of them.

 The sweet corn plants are now very well established and showing definite promise. Combined with the mixture of heavy rain and hot sunshine that we've experienced over the past 4-6 weeks I would say that conditions are excellent for that, and virtually everything else.

In the greenhouse: the 5 Gardeners' Delight tomato plants are thriving (as are the 4 plants in the allotment) but the 3 free plug plants we got through Gardeners World magazine are extremely leggy, after arriving in a very straggly and distressed state. They may not last the course.

However, the 3 chilli plants we got in the same deal are now thriving and good companions to the Prairie Fire and Ring o' Fire plants which were grown from seed.  I'm hoping for good things on the chilli front this year - and a couple of new ristras too!

The sweet potato plugs really need to be planted on into a potato bag in the green house - an urgent job for this week/weekend.

The salad trays continue to grow well and provide cut and come again salad leaf. The successional sowing has improved greatly.