Bountiful days

The shallots have been harvested and are lingering in a box on the cellar top. Not bad for a £1 net of sets from Poundland. Will try them again. I've planted out onion seeds in the vacant space. Not sure how they'll do at this stage of the year, but I thought I had better use up an unopened packet before it became out of date. No idea what sort of onions they are, it didn't say on the packet.

The remainder of my Desiree potatoes have also been dug up and there was a decent haul there. So too am I having a good crop of runner beans and courgettes. Perhaps we should hold a harvest festival service.

Some spinach beet and more onions have gone where the potatoes were. I could have used green manure on this bit, but it seemed a bit early to put this bit of soil out to grass. I wanted the space to remain productive and get its nutrients that way. I've also set some spinach beet off in the conservatory, ready to plant out later.

Waiting in the wings are the french beans, kohlrabi and broccoli. They seem to be coming on and should be ready soon.

But the tomatoes are the big if. Precisely two have ripened so far (the sungold ones). There's plenty of green ones, but they are remaining stubbornly green.

I'm looking now for inventive ways of using runners beans and courgettes. One thing that worked well today was something called Greek runner beans, taken from the marvellous allrecipes.co.uk website. Pretty tasty dish.