The red onions are growing well. i have not grown these before but they were given to us so – waste not want not. We placed a netting cage over the top for the early stages to prevent the blackbirds from pulling them out. That seems to have done the trick.

We have left a row of sorrel from last year in the middle of one of our beds and I have planted some small tomato plants to the far side and any rogue potato plants that appear on the plot anywhere have been moved to the foreground here. we don’t actually want to grow many potatoes as we hardly ever eat them but its a shame to throw the plants when they have persevered so well.
We must have dug our pulled out about 40 last year but still they are trying to come through in the middle of everything else.

Got a couple of hours without rain over the weekend to plant out my various courgettes. Planted 3 regular courgettes, 3 summer squashes and 2 other round summer squashes. Placed each one in a wooden frame like a yard bed which has space to step between. I am assuming that these will spread all over the place so I have given them plenty of room each. Bring on the courgette glut!

Summer squash are really shooting up now. I did not have pictures of what these are going to turn our like but I think they are the scallop variety that I got from vegetableseeds.net. I look forward to eating these.
it will make a change from the usual shaped courgettes.

I seem to already have more than a dozen courgette plants on the go and wondered if anyone out there had managed to stagger their harvest before – as I don’t really want to have an overload in july like last year – when I only had 4 plants.
I have a half a dozen regular courgettes and about a half a dozen summer squashes and I am anticipating theat they will all fruit at the same time. Should I hold some back in the shed and deprive them of light for a few weeks so that they fruit later or do they always fruit at the same time of the year? Anyone got any ideas?

My rocket and mizuna

seeds have germinated in the back garden. I sowed 4 different  salad seeds into a large terracotta pot and the ticket and mizuna have both come through. Still waiting for the outreach orach and sorrel.

I may be a little but behind schedule with the tomatoes but they have started to emerge from the soil. And I think these will get panted out on the allotment if they manage to survive the cold, rain and winds. I have 3 larger plants at home that we bought for our back garden – hopefully one of our locations will manage to avoid the blight that normally decimates my crop in late august every year.

Picked quite a lot of psb at the weekend and made this large tart with it. First time at making my own pastry too – not sure why it took me so long. The resulting tart lasted a few days worth of lunches.

We seem to have had 2 weeks of rain now. That more than makes up for the previous 3 months surely. Enough already! I want to get out on the allotment this weekend. there is a lot to do. I have just checked the weather predictions and it looks like the next dry day is next monday. Hopefully the rain predicted for the weekend will only be short showers. Fingers crossed.

The tiny sprouting broccoli plants are mostly doing fine. One casualty out of about 20 is fine by me. Plastic bottles are providing protection until they are strong enough to look after themselves.