Kitchen Garden Forum

Our flowers, especially any yellow ones, are covered in pollen beetles. Having brought a small bunch of sweet peas into the kitchen last night, the windowsill and window was this morning covered in these small beetles. I always thought they were mainly found on oilseed rape flowers but we have none of these around here at all. Must be the warm weather.

We grow gourds for drying and I noticed the flowers were full of them yesterday when I was trying to train the plants into some sort of order.

Off for 2 weeks holiday, I hope the garden survives, though some rain is forecast.

I've got leaf curl on some of my tomatoes it seems to effect only the ones on one side I think it might be to hot for them no sign of white fly or anything on the leaves I'm thinking of hanging some old curtains to try and give them some shade but even that's going to be hard , in the day time I can just about manage two minutes in the pollytunnel then I have to get out

Hope you have a superb holiday, Tigerburnie.....you will certainy notice a difference to your plants after two weeks.

Not sure you should have said that OH! Given the ongoing heatwave forecast I hope Togerburnie doesn't return to find everything brown and shrivelled.

As long as it's only the plants that are brown and shriveled I won't be too sad ……………………!!

Annual ritual today.

Ceremonial picking and tasting of my first ripe outdoor tomato - a red Tumbling Tom growing in a sunny patio container.
Flavour was excellent but skin seemed to be much tougher than I remember them being last year. - possibly because of the heat. The container has certainly had plenty of water so I wouldn't have expected the skin to be that tough.

With the current weather we don't really need any other signs that summer is in full swing , but the first tomato is always a definitive moment. My outdoor cordon tomatoes are nowhere near this advanced.

I'm already giving mini cucumbers and courgettes away. Have seen a marked increase in the number of cabbage white butterflies fluttering around my vegetable patch over the past few days and am having to do a daily caterpillar inspection now.

You are well in front of me with the ripening but I have picked a few pounds of cherries this morning to get some before the birds have them all. They could do with a few more days to turn really dark red and develop the flavour, but still taste good at the medium red stage.

My cat has adopted a new hunting technique , he was lying on the bird table waiting for them to come to him, then a couple of hours later was draped across the top of the steps to the orchard with his nose next to a rat/mouse hole. It's obviously too hot to exert himself.

There's a hungry little hedgehog visiting at dusk every night for his dish of cat food, a drink of water and a few peanuts. There can't be much else for them to eat.

I'm harvesting the sugar snap peas I brought back from Thailand and the extra tall dwarf French beans are in full swing so I'm just having to be patient for the tomatoes and courgettes to start. It's jam and wine making time too. At least the lawns aren't growing so that's one job less.

Lottie as anticipated was as dry as a bone, but things seem to be holding quite well. Nothing is germinating or growing too much, except for the pumpkins & squash which seem to be enjoying the weather immensely. I had a very long list of things to do but only lasted until midday when it became unbearable - the thermometer showed 34 degrees at this point. As I'm neither a mad dog or Englishman I headed home!

No, it,s not sensible to be out there in this heat. Everywhere around here is very quiet today. I suspect people are starting to feel a little frazzled by it now and are just resting indoors until the cool of the evening.
I have two redcurrant bushes dripping with red fruit but they're covered with nets and I,m leaving them for another day in the hope they will develop just a little extra sweetness as I find them very sharp.

The birds seem to be looking very ragged and weary. I think they're finding the heat hard to cope with too. Am making sure they have plenty of fresh drinking water. It's evaporating very quickly in this heat.

Froze lots of peas, broad beans and sliced courgettes yesterday and also harvested the first potatoes, pot-grown in the garden. They are Pink Gypsy which we have grown for the first time. They have produced a good yield and tasted great.

Even the trees are suffering from the dry and hot weather - our hollies are dropping leaves and the bird cherries are losing whole branches! We have three bird drinking bowls in the garden as well as a small pond. The bowls needs constant topping up and the water also gets exceedingly hot!

I've not heard of Pink Gipsy, but grew Yetholm Gipsy a few years ago. It had purple, white and pink skin and a decent flavour.

I've picked 12 lb 9 oz blackcurrants from my Ebony bush. They are very large and even sweeter than usual with the sunshine. I'm going to look up the best way to prune it as it is getting rather straggly. I wont mind if there's a much smaller crop next year.

The fermenting bins are sterilised ready for the red and white currants which Im hoping to harvest tomorrow. They make a very pleasant tipple. I think I prefer the white it is very similar to a grape wine. There are two varieties of white currant, white Versailles and the best one is White Grape. The red currants are Red Lake which I got as cuttings when I attended a pruning course at Arley Hall many years ago and are still very productive.

Hi plumpudding, I always cut a third of the growth from our blackcurrant removing the oldest stems

Yes thanks Robo. I'll start with that then decide how much straggly growth to remove from the newer ones. It seems to have a more lax growth habit than other varieties I've had. I can't grumble about the productivity or flavour though, it's by far the best .