First courgette of 2009

Well, I've picked my first courgette of the year and I feel like a proud, over-age parent. It looks a very healthy specimen and we're hoping the taste lives up to the promise. Perhaps it will go in a curry tonight with some of the spinach from the garden. Fingers crossed that there will be more courgettes.

There are also one or two runner beans ready to pluck before they get any bigger and nice green tomatoes are emerging in the conservatory. I shall have to do my best to nurture them during this critical stage in their growth.

When I look back to starting this enterprise, almost a year ago now, it is amazing to see something that I have grown actually reaching the table.

Glory be!

Some tomatoes have appeared at long last on the Tomato Gartenperle plants I have grown from seed.

I have had a few for some time on the Bonny Best and Outdoor Girl plants I bought from the nursery (none yet on the Red Russian, though), but these are the first on something I have grown from seed. Let's hope they progress into the full-blown thing and don't stay green.

It's a satisfying feeling to have come this far.

A trip out

A visit to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Harlow Carr, near Harrogate, brings both inspiration and envy. Harlow Carr is a lovely site and it was beautiful weather when we went, one of the few days when it hasn't rained recently.

I'd not been before, so a two-for-one voucher in the Yorkshire Post provides an opportunity to see the site and well worth it too. The leisure industry seems to have run away with its pricing in recent years and we only seem to visit anywhere these days if it's free or discounted price.

Although the emphasis on Harlow Carr is probably more on flowers, there were some vegetable patches too and I particularly liked the mid-Victorian garden and the kitchen garden. An array of different coloured lettuces was particularly impressive.

One thing I noticed was that their vegetables were more closely planted than recommended in the books I have read. It didn't seem to harm them and I will probably not be so generous about space in future.

I have one vacant patch at the moment, having dug up the last of the potato plants this morning. The spuds have been very tasty, but not as numerous as I had hoped. It is also a mystery to me that the plants never flowered.

My friend Kate urges me to try spinach beet in the vacated space and I did buy some of these seeds while at Harlow Carr. Steve says that whatever I do I should never leave ground empty! Put another crop in, he says, suggesting some extra runners, French beans, salads or a green manure. I'll think on about this.

Spudulike

Here they are - eight of what I hope will become a bumper crop of Arran Pilot potatoes. I boiled them and we ate them with a spinach, red pepper and onion tart I conjured up, the spinach coming from the garden. A salad which included some lettuce from the garden accompanied. Simple but effective.

Actually, I'm still not sure what's going on with the spuds. They have yet to flower and the eight potatoes I harvested for tea were from three plants I lifted to see what their state was. A grand total of eight spuds didn't seem a big haul to me so will leave the remaining plants for a bit until something happens or curiosity gets the better of me.

It's been another day of showers, which I suppose saves me the trouble of watering the garden but also prevents me getting outside much. Even so, I managed an hour this morning before the rain came on really heavily. Weeding and pottering about was very satisfying, I found.

While thinking of a headline for this posting, I thought of the Spudulike chain and had to go and look up the spelling. I'm now the proud possessor the fact that the firm was once owned by the British School of Motoring. Business and the decisions it arrives at baffles me.

All things considered, not so bad

We're back from a week's holiday on the island of Anglesey, where it has been uncommonly hot. Along with the rest of the country, we fried. It was all a bit too much for our poor old dog Dolly. She really struggled and spent a lot of time asleep.

Thoughts turned, naturally, to the veg patch back home and how it was faring under the wilting heat. Susan warned me not to be too disappointed if some things had gone disastrously wrong because of lack of watering in my absence.

So there was a mounting sense of anticipation tinged with trepidation as we returned home. As it happens, to quote Jimmy Savile, things were not too bad. In fact, surprisingly good.

We'd moved the tomatoes out of the conservatory and into the open to catch whatever they could. They'd thrived so much that it proved difficult getting up the front footpath because of the spreading leaves.

It turned out there had been a day of showers prior to our return, giving the crops a well-needed soaking. The Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, about which I had been so worried, are now halfway up the pole and there are even signs of life in the one I had written off as dead.

Some of the runner beans have gone beyond the height of the pole (what happens then?) and there's a good bit of spinach and lettuce waiting to be harvested. In fact, we're having some of the spinach in a curry tonight. I like to think it will be the finest curry we have ever had, all because of my fresh produce from the garden.

The one thing I am really concerned about right now is the potatoes. They have still not flowered and some are looking distinctly blighted, ie leaves looking not too good. I haven't had time to do a proper fettle of the garden today and will have to have a trial lift of the potatoes tomorrow to see what they are doing.

Not bad overall. The veg don't seem to need me to be around.