20th July

Issy has been away on holiday with our youngest daughter (Bethany) this week as a treat for Bethany's 21st. Fortunately, our middle daughter (Alex) kindly took a day off work to help with deliveries on Friday, and then helped again with the Lido stall on Saturday.

I'm very grateful to her.

I have to confess that whilst they have been away, I have definitely had Chinese food and curry for dinner more times than I really should!

Last night however, I decided to finish work relatively early and make some proper food. I roasted some Charlotte potatoes in olive oil, and boiled some purple sprouting broccoli:

I added some fish as well, but that isn't relevant to this blog!

What is relevant is that the Charlotte potatoes are still tasting marvellous, and this is my way of announcing that the purple sprouting broccoli is ready to harvest, and back on the website!

It's going to be a real mix of good and bad news this week in terms of availability, because we have a few additions, but also a few things being taken off

We still have plenty of the Charlotte potatoes, but unfortunately we are coming to the last of the Colleen potatoes which have proved to be very popular.

Early main crop red potatoes are now available

We are also coming to the end of the current crop of carrots unfortunately.

I do have a further two beds of carrots planted up, but it is going to be a while before they are ready.

For most vegetables, I sow seeds in the greenhouse and then plant out seedlings when they are ready. However, this approach does not work for carrots, and they have to be sown directly on the field.

They then need warmth, light and moisture to grow. We have the first two in abundance, but as I'm sure you can imagine, I'm struggling with the last one, and with 59 beds, it can't always be the carrots' turn for the sprinkler!

Back to good news, the summer leeks are growing well, and I'm hoping they will be available in a few weeks

Runner beans and green beans are both growing nicely (dwarf french beans shown below)

I've had to take kale off sale for a couple of weeks while I manage some whitefly that have taken a shine to them

Spinach has been growing well and I think it will be back on sale next week

Chard is doing nicely, and is so colourful!

Let's talk squash -

You can't stop the courgettes!

Especially the yellow ones which are actually proving to be the most popular

Interestingly (well relative to the rest of the blog) the majority of these will be too big by Friday!

I'm thinking that we may need to widen our courgette offering as I know that some people do like the larger courgettes for things like barbecues, so we could have a small, standard and large offering?

We have a single butternut squash ready. I'm not going back to the field now, so you will have to put up with it being out of focus

We suddenly have loads of patty pan squash

And even more kuri squash

When I planted the squash, I figured it was best to have a triple sized bed for them. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but how on earth am I going to get to harvest those in the middle?!

Right, that's me done, time to sort some dinner

.......Curry tonight 😉