27th July

Let's start with some good news

The cherry tomatoes have started to ripen and are now back on the website!

Another bit of good news is that I am planning more pictures, and less commentary this week!

Standard tomatoes are also doing well, and I have spent the best part of both today and yesterday pruning all the tomatoes and the cucumber plants. Hot work, but essential to ensure that all their energy is focused into producing beautiful fruits!

I mentioned in a blog a couple of weeks ago that I get irritated with the word literally being used out of context, but I believe that I am entitled to say that I have literally had green fingers the last couple of days

That's all the chlorophyll from the tomato leaves!

Reflecting on the fact that the tomatoes are our most lucrative crop, I was minded to remember what my mother liked to preach when I was younger "Money doesn't grow on trees you know David!"

You were wrong mum!

Right, let's get back up on the field where it is less sweltering.

I have added a couple of courgette products this week in response to customer preference at the Lido stall. We ask people to choose their own, and the yellow courgettes are more popular than the green. We have therefore added a yellow courgette offering.

These things grow like crazy!

The standard size courgettes are by far the most popular, but we do have people wanting the larger size for things like barbecues, so again, these have been added as an offering.

This is a perfect sized courgette today, but it will be about a foot long by Friday!!

Spinach is back on sale and is looking marvellous

As is the rainbow chard

Runner beans are loving the hot weather and are growing way above my wigwam structure

Climbing beans in the bed next door are also growing vigorously

Beautiful flowers on the climbing beans as well

Talking of flowers, unfortunately the lettuces that were planted only a few weeks ago have decided to bolt just as they had got to a perfect size. They will go down as another casualty of the hot weather.

I do have a few that were planted shortly afterwards, so we will manage to still offer the leaves for sale. Interestingly the red cos are still fine.

Whilst we are talking negatives, I am desperately trying to work out what is going on with the purple sprouting broccoli. We were able to offer a few portions last week, but the plants seem to have paused this week. I've got three beds given over to them so I hope they will pick up

Off at a tangent, I often think that it is possible to draw some similarities in the concept of what I am doing and what Jeremy Clarkson is doing on his farm. I am obviously on a significantly and vastly smaller scale but with more manual hands on work!

What we share is that we are both clueless and making it up as we go along. Both making lots of silly mistakes, but with a passion to succeed.

What I wouldn't give though to have an equivalent of his Kaleb and Charlie to turn to for advice!

I've mentioned that I am amazed at how fast the courgettes grow, but I think that can be extended to the whole squash family.

We have lots of mini butternut squash which will be ready very soon

The patty pans are all over the place!

The kuris are plentiful

Only thing is that they don't know when to stop, and are spreading all over the place. The new crop of beetroot which is ready and looking great, probably isn't best pleased by the encroachment

Two weeks ago, the weather forecasters promised a deluge of rain for yesterday, a week ago it was revised to a few hours. The ten minutes light drizzle was pathetic.

Hopefully by the time I write again next week the clouds will have opened.................................but I don't think that's likely 😢