13th July

An emu can't fly but can jump up to 7 foot in the air. It is the only bird that has calf muscles.

The reason I mention that is because the field opposite mine is owned by a lovely lady called Jo who has three horses. She arrived at the field on Saturday morning to find that she had three horses and an emu!!

I was busy doing the stall at the Lido, so missed all the excitement, but apparently they spent most of the day trying in vain to find the owner. Most of the responses that she received were referencing Rod Hull!!

In the end a sanctuary came and collected the bird. A selfish, but honest thing to say is that I was relieved that it wasn't my field as the potential damage to the veggies doesn't bear thinking about!

It doesn't bode well for the blog that the most exciting thing that I have to talk about this week doesn't even relate to Saltdean Vegetables!

So, the second most exciting thing this week is to report that our runner beans are ready. Not many available this week so please be quick. I expect availability to increase substantially over the next few weeks 👍

Green beans are also doing nicely, both the climbing beans and dwarf french beans.

The dwarf french beans should have been ready way before the climbing beans, but unfortunately both of my first two sowings failed, so that set me back by about 6 weeks. I purchased a different variety of bean from a different seed supplier, and they were fantastic! Lesson learned for next year.

(I am getting the vast majority of my seeds from Tamar Organics who I think have been excellent)

I often moan about how much there is to do and how I am getting behind against my plan, but I have to say that despite the heat this week, progress has been positive.

It seems a long way off, but I got two beds of sprouts in this week in preparation for Christmas! They are safely covered in netting to keep off the pesky cabbage whites, so please excuse the poor photo

The parsnips have been in for a couple of months, and are looking healthy

So, I have been prioritising Christmas! What feels even stranger though is that I also planted purple sprouting broccoli which should be ready next spring! (sorry no photo)

Finally, I also got round to clearing out a bed of onions that went to seed a couple of months back. Alongside the onions, the weeds had literally had a field day (One of my annoyances is the misuse of the word literally such as "I literally died with embarrassment" or in the heat lately "we literally melted", but I think I may be justified in using the word in this context?)

Anyway, I actually thought that the combination of the onions and the weeds was attractive to the eye, and I knew that it was very attractive to the local pollinators

I did therefore feel a bit mean taking it all away, but we need the space to grow some more veg.

A bit of the guilt is relieved by the fact that we have a triangle in the corner of the veg area where we have planted some flowering perennials to keep the pollinators happy. He looks ok!

I'm a bit worried about our short cucumber plants at the moment as we have a couple where the fruits have shriveled and died. I need to keep an eye on those. I don't want to blame the heat yet again!

Tomatoes are looking great though

Next in the pipeline will be the purple sprouting broccoli; if not next week then definitely the week after..

And the same for Kuri squash:

Let's hope for some overnight rain before I blog again!