July and August in the Veg Patch

I started this blog to record what we have done in the patch, so that next year I can look back and reflect on what worked or didn't. So far this year I think we can claim success - we haven't bought a vegetable from the shops since May and there is sufficient variety that we don't get bored. Currently on the menu is leuttice, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, chillis, melons (OK, one so far but still!), rainbow chard, salad cabbage, red cabbage, the last of the strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, runner beans, french beans, frozen broad beans and peas, squashes/courgettes, carrots, beetroot, onions, garlic, basil, corriander, dill, parsley, sage, oregano and mint.


In May, I mentioned my big squash experiment. This inolved making a lasagne on top of undug turf using unrotted compost, horse manure and erm...a shower curtain and planting through it. It looked a bit like this:

Well, I am pleased to report to all of my fellow lazy gardeners out there, IT WORKS! This is how it looks today:

 

The plants needed watering in the first few weeks to get established, but since then I have done nothing except harvest squillions of lovely shiny squashes and courgettes.

The strategy of 'less is more' on the tomato plant front has worked well in the greenhouse, where we have had lots of tigerella and beefsteak tomatoes.

Green peppers and for the first time, Picollino peppers (grown from saved seed) have been a real success:

Piccolino's are like normal peppers just smaller  - so you can roast and stuff with garlic cream cheese. Mmmmm.

Three cucumber vines have kept us in cucumbers nicely all summer.

My first (and only) melon.



 The runners keep on coming and the remainder of the broad beans are drying out so that I can use the seed next year.

Flat leaf parsley has been fab this year! Next to the leaf beet as spinach has been a failure - too hot and dry.

And lastly, the gorgeous red cabbage- fairly untouched by caterpillars. Can't wait for spicy braised red cabbage this autumn.

 

Fast Food

Finally we have reached that time in the season when we are eating entire meals which have been grown on site.

The first pickings of spinach, dill, parsley and some eggs from the hens made a lovely spinach omlette (OK, I admit, the feta cheese was bought).

Oh yes, we even rusticaly gather the bounty in a rustic old trug.

And then last night, a salad using some leftover BBQ meat from the weekend with some tiny new 'Pink Fir' spuds, radish 'French Breakfast', leuttice, baby spinach leaves and some gorgeous carrot thinnings just eaten raw in the salad.



Oh and for afters and to be sliced over cereal in the mornings this week.....


They don't call it the good life for nothing!