It's Broccoli Week

We've been eating very well this week - there's been a distinct broccoli flavour to everything: Paella with broccoli, courgettes and whole young broad beans; Broccoli Romanesco dhal; Pasta with courgette and broccoli bolognese; Broccoli and broad bean risotto. Only today we're having a day off from broccoli with starters of beetroot salad and steamed chard with hard-boiled eggs, followed by a large plate of new Epicure potatoes with butter, salt and peeper.

All the main heads of broccoli are gone. Now waiting for the secondary growth

Our first Broccoli Romanesco

This was the week that we discovered that chickens like raspberries. On the job list for next week: putting chicken wire around the raspberries. Luckily the strawberries are netted off and outside the hens' roaming range. The Symphony strawberries especially are delicious.

Inside, one of the cantaloupe melons had its first male flower. I've taken out the growing tips to encourage lateral growth, but it looks like I'll have to hand pollinate, just like with the indoor cucumbers.

The cantaloupe melons

The cats had been using the salad pond as a giant litter box so we've had to improve the netting and re-sow the next lot of lettuces. But since they are doing such an excellent job at vole control we can't really be angry.

Our most advanced pumpkin

The parsnip and chard bed

The de-leafed celeriac is starting to bulk up

 One of the Brussels sprouts is making a getaway

In the spring we had rescued a lot of frog spawn from a puddle on the road and deposited it in our wildlife pond. Now the next generation of pest control is leaping about the garden. Go, amphibians!

Little froggers everywhere

Harvesting in earnest

Another week without rain and this in Scotland! Suddenly, lots of things are ripening. It was a week of many firsts - first chili, mangetout, Swiss chard, spinach - but the most exciting was probably the first outdoor cucumber. Proof of concept that we can grow them outside here. And the first new potatoes, but they'll still need another 10 days or so. Still, the tiny Epicures were melt in your mouth delicious.

Wednesday morning's bounty

We finished laying the weed-suppressing fabric around the beds, and things are looking a lot tidier. Jim used a boatie tool, the hot knife, to cut it so that the edges wouldn't fray but seal instantly. It worked a treat. I'm now looking forward to 'maintenance weeding'.

The paths are no longer weed fests

Our first strawberries are on the cusp of being ready. The juiciest one, which was three quarters red, was pecked by a bird so we put up an impromptu strawberry cage this morning.

The strawberry cage

 We've been eating a large bowl of salad every lunch and often another starter-size salad at dinner so I've been sowing a lot more saladings this week, plus some winter spinach.

The Brussels are forming

Oregon sugar mangetout. Not many will make it as far as the kitchen methinks

Broad bean De Monica

Purple Delicacy kohl rabi - trouble-free so far

The first outdoor tom has appeared

The onion patch

While we'll definitely have enough of some veg, I can already see that I woefully underestimated the onion numbers. It was the first thing we planted out and looked like a lot at the time, but next year I'll plan for 400 plants.

Very chuffed that we've been eating all our own stuff this week. Supermarket runs will be mainly for cheese, beer and chocolate in the near future. Now can we have a little rain, please, but only during the night?

Beetroot, melon and sun

The big news this week is that the digging of the veg patch is done! Jim went all out and dug for eight hours one day just to get it done. Now we are hard at work weeding between the beds and putting down weed-suppressing fabric weighed down with the hundreds of stones that Jim quarried while digging.

Chilli flowers, with empty salad pond behind

The other big job this week was hedge maintenance. Since a lot depends on us creating a good wind break it was time for some TLC on the budding hedge. The usual suspects, bracken, ground elder, nettle and dock, had been doing their damnedest to overwhelm the blackthorn, but now all that has been cleared and the hedge is looking good. Only three out of 225 didn't take.

Blackthorn windbreak hedge coming along

Our first salad leaves - tatsoi and mustard - were finally past their best so I've resown the salad pond with chicory, endive and a couple of frilly lettuces. The rocket and cress are also getting towards their end, but the little gems are just coming on stream. Next year, I'll get into successive sowings a bit more. This year, I've been only doing that for rocket, cress, carrots, radishes and beetroot.

Beetroot Boltardy

We've been eating beetroot all week and it's been so good I went out and sowed another couple of rows. What a great plant - it's like getting two things for the price of one. The leaves are just as tasty as any spinach. I'm wondering whether to dispense with growing spinach and just have beetroot. Next year, they will get a whole bed to themselves.

Courgette Nimba looking happy again after copious feeding

Oregon Sugar Pod pea flowers

Christmas Drumhead Cabbage is hearting up

The potatoes are growing enormous and have started to flower

First glimpse of a Broccoli Romanesco

I have received more gardening gifts this week. That's one thing I love about gardening. You give a lot of nice things and get some fantastic plants and produce in return. My neighbour brought me two cantaloupe melon plants as a thank-you for the four tomato plants I'd given him a couple of months ago. And one of my friends gave some old watermelon seeds since he wasn't realistically going to grow them in his tenement garden. Two of them have come up so far.

Gifts of melon

Melon had been on my list to try for next year, but I can see that one of the main challenges will be keeping down the number of gardening projects I've got going at any one time. It's all so tempting.

Summer has finally arrived and we've had to water the plants outside. Unheard of. Previously we had so much rain that quite a few of the squashes rotted on the vine, despite not touching the ground. Is there anything that can be done to avoid that?

Anyway, we now have sun and plenty of it. The previous owners had set up a clever rain water collection system, whereby the rain water runs from the house down to half a dozen collection barrels and from there to a tap in the veg garden. After watering the entire patch the water level was only down by about a fifth so there should be plenty until the next rain.

There shall be blueberries

The only thing that just won't grow is the rhubarb. We'd already moved it once to a better site, but its one and only leaf just turned yellow and whithered this week. I have now unceremoniously dumped it in one of the compost bins. That's its last chance. Otherwise I'll try to grow it from seed next year and plant it into a well-manured bed.

One other exciting bit of news: I treated myself to a number of tea herbs and four lots of hops in pots. Happy home brewing ahead.

Reuse and recycle

It finally looks like we're getting somewhere, not just in the veg patch but also in the rest of the garden. The weeding level has gone down to something approaching normal and I can actually see that I might catch up. Jim's scythed the entire acre again and the grass clippings from the lower paddock alone were just enough to mulch the potatoes.

The potatoes are mulched. Three more weeks till harvest time!

It's fantastic to use the grass clippings for mulching immediately and recycle all that goodness back into the soil. We've also started two more batches of nettle fertiliser. Very satisfying to weed and then drop the nettles straight into a barrel for stewing.

The outlook: more cucumbers

Not long now

Broccolis are forming

Swiss chard

I've planted out the leeks this week. Quite an involved procedure: topping and tailing the leeks, making 15cm deep holes, dropping the leeks in without filling the hole with soil and then filling the holes with water. Times 32.

The pumpkins have recovered somewhat after I ramped up the fertilising regime. I now fertilise every other day and they seem to like that.

The pumpkins are looking healthier again

Some of the plants that I thought were butternuts have turned out to be pumpkins so all the squashes are mixed up - never mind. Very pleased to have spotted the first distinct butternut shape:

That one is definitely a butternut

The outdoor tomatoes are looking very well. No fruits yet, but plenty of flowers and a nice green colour:

The Ailsa Craig tomatoes doing fine outside so far

The artichokes, however, are not looking so hot. Something seems to be chomping the leaves. Is there anything that can be done about that? Artichoke experts, please help!

What's eating the artichokes?

The plot is filling up

Squash corner

I've been away for most of the week and everything has turned really lush in my absence. Jim's been a stalwart digger and we've now planted out the last of the squash family: 10 butternuts, 1 hokkaido, 2 more pumpkins and courgettes and 4 cucumbers. I've decided to keep half of the cucumbers in the conservatory, but see how the plants do outside. Apparently they only grow between 18C and 32C.

Squash corner: butternuts, hokkaido and cucumbers

This week was quite exciting because we had our first home-grown courgette (Nimba really is an early variety!) and our first cucumbers. Unfortunately a few of the pumpkins and courgettes have rotted on the plant so I plan to put bricks under the remaining fruit this afternoon.

Bedfordshire Prize cucumber

The tendrils of the cucumber had gripped onto the bamboo cane so much that I just left it on.  This cucumber variety is a ridge one, with small knobbly fruit, and it does need to have its male flowers for pollination.

The red cabbage has just shot up

The cabbages are doing really well without much attention. Friends have brought me a sauerkraut crockpot from Germany and I'm looking forward to pickling all kinds of cabbage in it and maybe also some cucumbers.

Pretty broadbean flowers, very popular with the bumblebees

Every so often, you get given some amazing gifts for your garden and this week I was given a quince tree! Since I grew up with three of them in my gran's garden and there is a family tradition of processing the fruit, I really wanted one, even though Scotland is probably a bit marginal in its growing range. The tree is still tiny, but I've put it in a very sheltered spot behind the compost bins so I have high hopes.

A gift of quince

As regards the fruit, the apples are doing well. I discovered two further apple trees in the 'chicken forest'; they look like they are about 10 years old but only had one set of blossom. Apparently they were grown from pips and this is the first year they've fruited. Let's hope the fruit is edible as it will be a cross between the original tree and whatever other tree pollinated it (hopefully not a crap apple).

The Victoria plum has one fruit on it so we'll get a little taster this year. The summer raspberries (Leo and Glen Magna) are looking terrible, yellow and brown leaves, wind scorch etc., but the autumn varieties (Fall Gold, All Gold and Autumn Bliss) are looking superb. Maybe we should only grow autumn varieties here.

The blueberries have doubled in size and the strawberries look like we'll get some fruit this year. We found quite a few small strawberries in one of the veg beds so I've put them in with the Symphonies and yesterday I got given some more early-fruiting strawbs so the bed is filling up. We also have some Albions, a perpetual variety, in another spot.

Strawberry circle

Being away means that I have some serious weeding to catch up on. Here we go!