Normal Service Has Been Restored

Enough of my trials with the red ants (the bites are much better, thanks for asking....), let's get back to matters vegetabular (have I just coined a new word?)

It's been chucking it down here since I last went (and got all bitten) so as there were some bits of blue in the sky today I thought I'd best grab the opportunity to get down the road to do some weeding and harvest some stuff. The last pictures of the plopment proper were on 8 July which is some time ago now. So, behold the jungle that has appeared since last you looked:


All the new potatoes have been dug up now and, delicious though they were, the yield was quite staggeringly poor. In the vast majority of cases, I only got 2, maybe 3, spuds per plant! Barely worth it. I'm hoping for much better things from my Desiree main crops.

I'm growing quite a few new things this year that I've not tried before - Butternut Squash is one. You grow them like cucumbers, up poles, but I believe pollination is a bit tricky - it says on the packet that you can aid pollination by using a paintbrush or just sticking your finger into one flower and then into another to act as a surrogate bee or bug or whatever. I've found, though, that I've only so far had one flower open at a time! This is just an experiment, though. We'll see what happens.



Another veg I'm growing this year for the first time is the Pattypan Squash or, to give it its more formal title, "Early White Bush Scallop Summer Squash". Originally grown by native Americans for hundreds of years, it's now very popular in modern American vegetable patches but little grown over here. You grow them just like courgettes and I started by sowing just three seeds but all three germinated so I didn't bother sowing any more (I only need to grow enough to feed the 2 of us and if it's anything like courgettes....need I say more?)


But, look, I harvested my first squash today! Well, okay, so it was the only one on the 3 plants but I'm hopeful there'll be more! In the picture the squash is next to (some of) today's harvest of Cobra Climbing French Beans and another new arrival, Yellow French Beans.

My courgettes are coming along:


As are the cucumbers:


The Calabrese/broccoli:


And the Sweetcorn is starting to develop its flowers (or what passes for flowers in sweetcorn-world):


The two rows of Resistafly Carrots seem happy enough, but it's hard to tell until you dig some up, so we'll see later if they stand up to their billing:


The lettuce hedge is as succulent as ever. One thing I can say for my plopment is that it grows terrific lettuces. Just after I took this picture I tasted a few of the leaves from the salad bowls (frilly bright green plants in the picture) and, sadly, they were starting to bolt (I'd suspected as much) and the leaves were so bitter I had to spit them out, so I removed them. Fortunately I'd brought with me half a dozen new lettuce seedlings so they got popped into the vacant space.


The fox trampoline was starting to look a bit full and as I'd not weeded underneath the mesh since planting the brassicas in there, I figured it was time to do it.


And this is showing just how big the brassicas have got (I think we're looking at mainly Savoy Cabbage here and possibly some Brussels Sprouts):


The Cosmos that Sylvia planted when she had the top of my plot has flowered beautifully this year. I decided to leave them as the colours are so vivid.


And, finally, this year's competition on the site is for the best scarecrow (last year was tallest sunflower and the year before that was something to do with sweetpeas, I think). Anyway, I have enough to be getting on with without having to think about designing and constructing a scarecrow so won't be entering, but other people on site are and scarecrows are gradually appearing. The competition is going to be judged sometime during the week of 10-16 August (which is, apparently, National Allotment Week) but this one went up this afternoon (all 10ft of it!) and I think it's fabulous - such an easy design and so effective! Bit early for Hallowe'en but what the heck, I wish I'd thought of it now!!

Welcome to the new plastic-house

A few days ago I was wandering around eBay (as you do) when I thought I'd visit some of the seller's I have saved that I've not been to for a while. One of these is Premier Seeds Direct. They're fully registered and inspected by DEFRA so you can be assured of the quality of their seeds, and they do some fabulous and unusual varieties. Prices are very reasonable too - everything is 99p a packet plus postage but if you buy several packets, you only pay one lot of postage and everything arrives in a couple of days. I can highly recommend their site and suggest that you head off there for a wander round yourself.

I got five packets of seeds, a couple of which, no doubt, I could have got from my local Homebase but as I was already loading up with other seeds I thought I'd bung those in the basket as well. What I got was:

Crystal Lemon Cucumbers - The website says: "An unusual Heirloom variety producing a profusion of apple-shaped fruits, with lemon-coloured skin and lime green flesh, which is very mild, sweet, and never bitter. Best harvested at lemon size. Although outstanding for salads or pickling, chances are you will end up eating most of these delectable nuggets out-of-hand like an apple. This is a vigorous plant which should yield a tremendous crop." I did extremely well with just two Telegraph cucumber plants last year so we'll see how these interesting ones go.




Dwarf Yellow French Beans 'Rocquencourt' -"One of the finest and earliest yellow heirloom French Filets available with a taste that is truly un-comparable. Heavy crops of long thin oval yellow string-less pods with black seeds are produced on sturdy dwarf plants. Can be sown in succession until mid-July as this is one of the most cold tolerant of all French beans." This sounds good, doesn't it? I'll let you know how it goes. I also don't know if the colour remains when cooked or if they turn green, like those purple ones you can get. But I expect I'll find out.

Summer Squash Early White Bush Scallop - "A prolific variety, scallop-edged and flattened, this patty-pan variety is sweet, nutty and white-fleshed. Compact bush-type plant is ideal when space is a factor. Cultivation character and habit as per Courgettes, fruiting all summer if picked regularly. For optimum eating quality, harvest when fruit are a maximum of eight inches in diameter. Use raw in salads and with dips, or steamed, fried and baked. Freezes well. Matures in 50-55 days." Don't these look fab? This is just an experiment really because I've no idea if I'll even like the taste of them but, hey, if I don't give them a go then I'll never know, right?

Little Gem Lettuce - "One of the quickest and earliest varieties to mature. Little Gem produced small compact plants which are packed with a crisp sweet heart and little outside leaf". It'll be a miracle if I can get this to grow properly but I like shop-bought Little Gem so thought it was worth a try.








Broccoli (strictly, Calabrese) 'Waltham 29' - "Excellent compact, 20 inch plants have dark blue/green, solid, medium sized heads, with plenty of side shoots once the main head is harvested. Developed to withstand the coldest of winters. Don't use this variety for spring planting. Best for late summer sowing for autumn to spring harvests." I grew Purple Sprouting Broccoli last year and wasn't exactly bowled over by it. What I want to try this year is 'proper' Broccoli, like what you get in the shops, which is actually Calabrese. I'm hedging my bets with this, though, because I also bought a polystyrene tray of six Calabrese seedlings today that were on special offer, which can go into the allotment shortly.

But then it dawned on me that I didn't really have enough space left in the plastic- house in the garden so decided there was only one thing for it, and that I'd have to just get another one, so welcome, one and all, to the new companion plastic-house (the one on the right of the picture). May the deity of your choice bless her and all who grow in her!

(God, I don't know what's happened with the fonts and the colours and I can't sort it out. Look, just read the words and ignore the rest of it. Hopefully the next post it will be back to normal!!)

Faster, Higher, Stronger....

It's been almost a month since I last updated the blog which is, perhaps, a little remiss of me, and for which I humbly beg your forgiveness. In my defence, the weather at the end of July deteriorated so I didn't go to the allotment all that much plus the last couple of weeks I've been glued to the telly watching the Olympics. And when I did go to the plopment I seemed to do nothing more than pick French Beans, which I thought was very boring to write about. The running total is - get this - 38.5 pounds of beans. I'm getting sick of them, as are my family, friends, neighbours and complete strangers in the street. In fact anyone who comes anywhere near me will be asked if they want some beans. My freezer is full of them, as is my fridge. There are carrier bags of them sitting on my garage floor.

This is all the more astonishing when you see just how battered and weedy the plants are looking now, but they're still damn well producing! Having said that, though, I think production is tailing off now and hopefully will be finished in a few weeks. It said on the seed packet that Cobra French Beans are a prolific cropper and they're not wrong! I've had getting on for 40 pounds of beans from about 40 plants (planting 2 or 3 to a cane). Whether I plant as many next year remains to be seen. One thing I will change, however, is the shape of the cane structure. The way it is now is traditional but I hadn't realised just how windy it gets at the plopment, and the structure's come apart on more than one occasion. Next year I think I'll put the canes in a more robust teepee-shaped construction which also means I can dot them about the place as well.

All my onions are now out of the ground. Our site secretary recently sent a warning round that the top of the of the allotment site had been hit by Downy Mildew which affects onions. I'm at the bottom end of the site and actually don't know if it affected my onions or not. The leaves were going yellow and falling over, but that's what they do anyway when it's time to harvest them. There's all sorts of ways of harvesting onions including doing stuff like bending over the tops and leaving them in the ground prior to digging them up (not sure what this is supposed to do), or easing them out of the ground with a fork but not pulling them up altogether, and leaving them there for a couple of weeks (I think this is supposed to start the 'stop growing' process). I know you have to let them dry for at least a couple of weeks before you can store them (otherwise you run the risk of them rotting in storage).

I decided that as the foliage was dying down on all of them they might as well come up out of the ground and do their drying in the shed which is draughty enough to allow drying to occur. The Husband kindly attached battens to the walls of the shed so that various hooks could be screwed in to hang implements from, and these battens actually make handy little shelves which, although extremely narrow, are wide enough to support an onion bulb. I've also got some hanging up in a pair of tights in my garage with a plastic tie between each one so they don't touch - the idea being that you cut the toe off the tights leg and remove the onion, undoing the tie so the next one drops down. It seems to work except that I can't seem to hang the tights high enough so they don't drag on the floor! We've eaten a few as well and while they're not as eye-wateringly strong as I remember previously home-grown onions to be, they're most acceptable. They're also very crunchy, which I like. So as long as they dry properly and store well, I'm going to chalk that up as a huge success for the onion crop! Next thing I have to do is track down some over-wintering Japanese onion sets to plant in September and see if they work.

The lettuce hedge is no more. The Salad Bowl lettuce was brilliant but bolted, as had the Wild Rocket, so they all had to come out. I've been successionally growing Lollo Rossa lettuce as well though so we're now eating them. I've also sown some mixed lettuce seeds that, supposedly, I can overwinter if I put cloches over them, so we can have salad leaves in Spring. I'm pretty cynical about that working but I'll give it a go. My carrots, however, are going from strength to strength. Luckily (touch wood) I think I've managed to avoid Carrot Root Fly as I've found no evidence yet in any of the carrots I've dug up, so I've just carried on sowing seeds at 2-3 week intervals, and planting them out in the plopment when big enough to handle. Although it may not be terribly clear from the picture but there are 5 rows of carrots, each with about 20 plants, so that's (hopefully) 100 carrots! The orange string shows where the latest row of little transplants went in a few days ago.

I think my Sweetcorn will be ready to eat very soon but I'm going to leave them a bit longer yet.

I've been gradually earthing up my Leeks individually lately. You do this so that a large percentage of the plant is blanched - the white bit that is eaten. I'm rather pleased with how they've come along especially as Leek Growing Lore seems to be very complicated and I just ignored all that and shoved them in the ground. We'll see what happens when I come to harvest them next year though. Hopefully I should get about 35 Leeks come harvest time, all of varying sizes I should imagine. The local Fruit & Vegetable Show is on in a couple of days and while part of me is quite tempted to have a go at entering some of my produce, I don't honestly think I've got anything that's of Show standard. I've been concentrating far too much on getting the ground cleared and actually producing something edible than to bother with all the palaver of producing showbench winning veg! Maybe next year though...

The Cucumbers have been a runaway success but are now, I think, coming to the end. I took a couple of pictures about 10 days ago so am posting them now. The first picture shows what they look like on the plant - this view reminds me of H R Giger's designs for the original 'Alien' film - all dark, smooth and tubular. I then picked them and laid them out on my kneeling pad with my trowel for size perspective - aren't they great!! Since then two have been sliced up and are sitting in two Kilner jars in pickling vinegar to be eaten over the winter, and we're eating our way through the others. Even after 10 days in the fridge they remain solid, hard, crunchy and juicy. I genuinely didn't expect to get anything like as good as this. Guess I'll be growing them again next year!

The Broad Beans have now all finished and I'll be taking out the plants quite soon, but leaving the roots in the ground as the roots of all bean plants fix nitrogen in the soil, so it's best to leave them. All of my Pentland Javelin first early potatoes are now out of the ground and either in storage or have been eaten. In their place I've sown Winter Spinach and Swiss Chard. The picture shows the Winter Spinach which has grown a bit quicker than I expected really (the black plastic covers the ground where the onions had been). I tasted one of the leaves the other day and it seems to be quite nice. I understand, though, that instead of just taking off individual leaves like you would with ordinary spinach, for winter spinach you cut off the entire plant to use, leaving the roots in the ground from which the plant regrows!

What else? The Herb Garden beside the shed has been quite prolific, even if I didn't eat very much of it. We had some of the French Sorrel as salad leaves (it tastes just like uncooked Bramley cooking apple), and I made some soup with the ordinary Sorrel (which was nice enough but not outstanding). The Basil I'm going to have a go at drying in my airing cupboard to then crumble up to put in a jar. The Garlic Chives I didn't use at all but as it's a perennial, it'll be there next year.
The Coriander has loved its location but is flowering like billyo now - I may save the seeds. The sweet peppers are coming along nicely as well - I have half a dozen decent sized green peppers but I don't like them green so even though I could pick and eat them now, I'm going to wait until they turn red.

The tomato plants are rampant but I have a horrible feeling there may be some blight there - there were fruits with tell-tale brown marking on the top. The brassicas are doing well, especially as I spend about an hour each visit just picking off the dang caterpillers. The green leafy growth coming out of the parsnips is just vast - I'm a bit concerned they're going to be huge and woody by the time I come to eat them, and I wanted to have them over winter rather than in the autumn. Is a puzzlement.

My First Cucumber!!!

Ladeez and Gennelmen - it gives me great pleasure, and no small amount of pride, to be able to introduce to you, my very first ever homegrown cucumber [drumroll]

Ta-Dah!! I decided that today was the day that the cucumber was big enough to be harvested and to commemorate the occasion, I've taken a couple of photographs so I can remember what it looked like after I've eaten it. So, for example, here it is reclining gently on the handrail of the bridge that leads to my garden.

Then I decided it did need something to compare it with so that you, gentle reader, might have some idea of the humungous size it had achieved, so here it is, sitting next to Sylvester, our slightly-
larger-than-
average cat who just happened to be there at the time I had the camera in my hand so was roped in to act as a ruler.

I also noticed at the plopment today that the tassels have started appearing on my developing sweetcorn cobs, so that means I have to start watering them all from now until harvesting. And one or two of the Broad Bean plants have started putting out shoots from the base - I dunno what that's all about but I'm inclined to leave them to see what happens, and if I get extra additional unexpected bonus beans, then so much the better!

I put in a few more Winter Spinach plants, so there's seven gone in now where some Pentland Javelin spuds have come out, and I think I'm going to investigate sowing Spring Cabbage for overwintering, to be eaten next May or thereabouts. Oh, and I must just tell you, we ate those gnarly carrots last night and the taste was almost overpowering!! It was like eating solid Essence of Carrot - intense wasn't the word. I've never eaten homegrown carrots fresh out of the ground before and it was just astonishing, frankly. So I'm definitely sowing more of those babies, you betcha!

Finally, by way of a change, I caught my 2.5 cats sitting companionably on the bridge this afternoon and, as it so rarely happens, I took a picture and am posting it here for your delectation. The black cat is Damian, my 0.5 boy - he spends half his time with us and the rest at his other house, 3 doors down. Then in the middle being sociable and facing the camera is Sylvester, and finally, closest to us but facing away is Pepper. They all say 'hello', by the way.

Anyone want any beans......?

Okay, those of you who know more about these sort of things than I have been very kind in not sending me emails pointing and laughing at the 'measly' 2 pounds of beans I picked last week. Because this morning, dear reader, I filled a carrier bag with the blighters and weighed them when I got home - 4lbs 10oz or 2086 grams. Oh. Dear. Lord. Fortunately the lady who owns the horses where I go riding says she'll have some, and I can feed a family of 5 down the road (except they're off to Tenerife on Thursday for 2 weeks) but that still leaves me with far more than I need. The upside is that it would have cost me £13.45 to buy that many beans at Sainsburys, although I'd want sectioning if I did...

The freezer bit of my fridge/freezer is a couple of large drawers but it's not vast so I've been pondering the old-fashioned way of preserving foodstuffs, by bottling or, as they call it in America (even though it uses jars) 'canning'. Apparently, if done correctly, stuff in jars can last for up to 15 months just sitting on shelves in your pantry (if you're lucky enough to have one) or, as in my case, the garage. It's still a very popular way of buying vegetables on the Continent. I can remember being quite surprised the first time I visited relatives in Holland and seeing glass jars of carrots and peas that had been bought from the supermarket.

Apart from the ridiculous bean situation, what else is happening at the plopment? Well, I decided to pull up some carrots and was genuinely thrilled there was actually enough to eat. And because I hadn't thinned them, they've all grown around each other and sprouted extra limbs and just gone generally gnarly! You wouldn't find those in the supermarket! Apparently our site is quite bad for Carrot Root Fly so I'm just hoping that these haven't been affected. Since I planted these guys, way back in April, I've planted at least 50 more carrot seedlings each 2 or 3 inches away from its neighbour so hopefully I'll get 'proper' straight carrots a bit later on.

The monster cucumber just goes from strength to strength! I'm having to tie the plants further up the bamboo cane wigwam almost every time I go as they're starting to sprawl somewhat. There are plenty other little tiny cucumbers forming so I've got my fingers crossed that we actually get to eat some of them this summer.

I'm digging up more of my First Early potatoes - Pentland Javelin. I'm not sure I'll bother with them next year, the yield per plant doesn't seem to be particularly high, they don't really have a lot of flavour and they don't seem to like being cut into quarters and boiled very much - they fall apart too quickly and the skin comes off. So I'm a little disappointed, to be honest, but at least I know now for next year. I've still got Second Earlies - Maris Peer (or Piper, can't remember which!) and Main Crop Desirees so it's not as if I'm going to be lacking in spuds this year! Where the Pentland Javelins have come out, I'm putting in Winter Spinach seedlings, and I've still got Swiss Chard sprouting at home which can go in when the rest of the potatoes come out.

That's about it for now - the Swifts are still squealing wildly around my head and I've never seen so many Cabbage White butterflies in one place before, all signs that Mother Nature is doing her thang for which we all must be eternally grateful.

Till next time, this is Kaz signing off saying "be most excellent to each other".

....Gods, what a monster......

I was dahn the plopment this morning, doing the usual, weeding, clearing a bit more land for the forthcoming Winter Spinach and Swiss Chard plants, when I decided to pick some beans. I'm growing Climbing French Beans (variety: Cobra - the same that whatsisname off Gardener's World is growing at his allotment, but I put mine in first....Joe Swift, that's him). A few plants have grown to the top of the poles but the majority are still clustering at around knee-height.

"There'll be just a few, " thought I, "I can use a few tonight and blanch then freeze the rest". Readers, what a sad, deluded fool I was to think such naive thoughts. I couldn't believe how many there were! So I decided that, when I got them home, I'd weigh them. As you can see, I put them in my biggest mixing bowl and stuck them on the scales (remembering to weigh the empty bowl first and zero it) and, amazingly, there are just over 2lbs of beans, or 933 grams for you more modern types. I checked with Sainsburys online to see how much they're selling their organic beans for and they're currently charging £6.45 a kilo. That means there's six quid's worth of French Beans in that bowl alone. God only knows, though, what I'm going to do with all the beans that are going to be coming - I've spawned a monster!!

Another candidate for the category of 'monster' is this cucumber - this is the same one that I pictured just six days ago and you can see how much bigger it's grown! I really hope it works properly as I adore cucumber. The plants are starting to sprawl across the ground a bit now so I'm having to tie them up to the bamboo wigwam in the hope that the developing cucumbers grow straight down. Unfortunately they do seem to be popular with Whitefly and I'm not sure how much damage they'll do - I think Google will be my friend in this and I'll research it in a bit.

It was a lovely day at the site today - the swifts have started swooping and screeching again after a gap of about a fortnight. They'll be gone by August so I'm wondering if the adults are now flying around with the fledglings, getting their muscles working and building up their strength for the monumental flight soon back to Africa. I'll really miss them when they've gone, they were joyfully chasing each other no higher than about 10 feet above my head today. It occurred to me that there were very few pictures of the rest of the site on my blog, so, the first one here is a view taken from beside my shed looking up the pathway. I'm about three-quarters of the way down the site which is nearly 5 acres in total - it's really quite big as you can see, and surrounded by houses on all four sides. A bit open, though, so it can get windy, but lovely nonetheless.

Facing the other way, down the path, immediately next to my plopment is a small car parking area - which you can see in the picture - then more allotments. There are others on the other side of the road but I didn't photograph those as the batteries in my camera were playing up then! C and M have the allotment with the white metal chairs and table, at which they hold parties on sunny Saturday evenings! How terribly civilised....


Some of you may wish to know what the plot next door to mine now looks like - this is the one, you may recall, that I was envious of earlier in the year because it's so neatly laid out with raised beds. Well, this is it now, and I have to say that, if nothing else, the sunflowers are magnificent!

Finally, a general shot from the end of my plopment looking back towards the shed and pathway. Please note the fantastic genuine 1970s parasol - my parents-in-law never throw anything away and to them I am particularly grateful for letting me have this fantasy in yellow and brown to sit beneath while resting my weary bones and deciding what to weed next. It has been a total life-saver this summer, so thanks Desmond and Minnie!

It's NOT a monsoon, okay?

According to the BBC, yesterday's downpour was absolutely not a monsoon although, apparently, some of the more populist newspapers were calling it such. According to The People Who Know About These Sort Of Things (i.e., proper scientists), 'monsoons' only occur in the Indian Subcontinent and although, as in this case, the term is frequently misused to describe heavy rain, it actually refers to the seasonal reversal of wind direction. So all we had was a month's worth of rain in one 24 hour period. And, boy, didn't it feel like it?!

I decided that I really ought to check out the plopment and see if everything was still there. I haven't been posting much because, frankly, I don't think it's all that interesting for you guys to read that I cut some lettuce for my tea, did some weeding and decided to stake my tomatoes as they were getting a bit tall and being blown over by the wind at our exposed site. But an update is a bit overdue.

I went down to the site for a couple of hours today just after lunch and, thankfully, everything was still there and thriving happily, so let me put up some piccies:

First off, here are the tomatoes which, as you can see, have now been staked! These eleven plants were given to me by a friend who didn't know what they were (other than tomatoes), i.e., whether they were bush or ... er ... the other kind (what are they called? you know, the ones that grow tall?) Anyway, I stuck them in the ground, did that business of removing the side shoots (when I remembered) and they seem to be happy enough. There are flowers and everything now. When the fruits start forming, I'll have to remember to start feeding them. After taking this picture I weeded out the encroaching couch grass that you can see at the bottom of the picture - b***** stuff....

Growing just behind the tomatoes are my outdoor indoor cucumbers. These are Telegraph cucumber plants which are, ideally, meant to be grown indoors but I'm trying them outdoors and I'm surprised at how well they're doing. They've thoroughly enjoyed the recent wet weather and there are a handful of little baby cucumbers coming along on both plants. I had to tie them further up the bamboo poles so that they don't trail on the ground and the plants and stems are really hairy and feel like they should sting but don't - bizarre. You can also see one of the cucumbers coming along nicely.

The onions are doing very well although apparently there's been an outbreak of Downy Mildew on some plots further up the site. I had a look at mine today and I'm not sure if they've contracted this or not. I'll need to keep a close eye on them because I'm very proud of my onions this year. The close up picture shows how large they've grown in comparison to an ordinary trowel. I think I'm going to have to start harvesting some soon...


So, what next? I'm growing Climbing French Beans (var: Cobra) up poles this year (I prefer french beans to runners which get stringy) and even though most of the plants are nowhere near the top of the poles yet, I've started harvesting some damn fine looking beans. Last year, before I had the plopment, and for several years before I had been growing French Beans in a couple of huge pots at home and last year had barely a pound of beans from them in total all summer. I think I've picked around a pound of beans just today so this all bodes well! Yum!

Just at the bottom right of the bean plant picture, you can see the Red Cabbages, so here's a better picture of the six biggest ones. I have some others growing in the brassica patch but they're much smaller so should mature a bit later in the year.

Also in the brassica patch are my gorgeous Curly Kale. I have been cooking a fabulous pasta recipe using garlic, bacon and Curly Kale so decided to grow it rather than buy the pre-shredded bagged stuff from the supermarket. My veg book (the Hessayon one) said that Kale was one of the easiest vegetables to grow and I can say it's been simple - just put the seed in a pot and it grows! I think we're going to be able to start harvesting a few leaves very soon, so I may well have to sow a few more seeds to get plants to see us through winter. You can't really tell from the picture (because it's been taken looking down on the plants and through the netting) but they're actually about a foot tall).

The sweetcorn is doing its sweetcorny thing, with each plant getting bigger and taller at different rates! When the wind is blowing through them they have that lovely rustly tall grass sound. Fingers crossed that I get some decent cobs out of them.

Finally, despite the wind and the cold, my little red pepper plants are still hanging on in there and starting to put out flowers which, hopefully, will turn into luscious sweet red peppers. Actually, I've already decided that if they don't work this year I shall persevere with them next year, perhaps finding different ways to grow them because (a) I like them and (b) they're so blimmin' expensive in the shops - I mean, 69p each!! - that's it's worth keeping going until I get it right!