Kitchen Garden Forum

Well done Westi, I've never been to a veg show let alone entered, don't know why not.

Well done, Westi…..that is brilliant news!

That's amazing Westi!

Tiger it is just the site show for fun, but we do have a retired ex judge who is pretty tough doing the judging & pretty straight forward. (Except with the children's entries). The mayor even presents the prizes which must be a long way from his usual role, but I suspect the ladies bacon butties are too tempting. Personally I'm keener on the cakes they bake!

Congratulations Westi. It must have been hard running a show at all under these drought conditions. Thst cabbage looks pretty remarkable. Talk about the parable of feeding the five thousand! I wonder how they'll split that one up at the food bank. It would feed the two of us here for weeks.......if we didn't have the courgettes to finish first !

The food bank is getting courgettes as well Primrose - along with runners & french beans & when I can be bothered to hire a digger there are too many spuds. (Rain please)! Lost a lot of my personal sharers to Covid or just old age, but still have 2 couples who enjoy it & I have new neighbours with a 8mth old & happy to accept to give the lad proper taste. Other neighbour gets as well to share with their daughters & grandchildren.

I do not have a single lettuce on the plot currently, they just don't want to put the factor 50 on & show themselves. Weather showing no rain up until the 21st! That when forecast ends, not necessarily when rain comes!

West, I suspect even our village foodbank clients are probably getting fed up with courgettes by now ! One certainly needs to get inventive with their use after the middle of July. We try to pick ours small and early when they are delicious raw in salads but one always manages to lurk and hide under a leaft somewhere until it's become a marrow.

We don't have any lettuces either. Their seeds don't seem to geminate in hot temperatures. In droughts like this we always rely on the young leaves of Swiss Chard (Fordhook Giant is our preferred variety). It seems to be more drought resistant than the usual lettuce varieties.

Evening, I'm managing to grow lettuce outside in shady spots, iceberg seem to be ok, I germinated them in the greenhouse underneath the tomato plants. I found a great way of stopping the glut of courgettes, I don't plant any of their seeds..........................

Picking early Autumn Raspberries and Strawberries, so far none have made the kitchen!

Nobody took up my identification challenge. It was a Cobra bean that had been throttled by the tendril of a Fairy squash.

My husband went to our village street market today. The biggest broccoli head available was the size of a small tangerine and there were few available. Previously they,ve been almost the size of a cauliflower. Shows how the drought is really hitting farmers now.

Sorry Geoff, I somehow missed that….an interesting looking thing, I must admit…

5 different types of tomato, Craigela, Tigerella, Moneymaker, Black Cherry and Borghese, taste trials later.

Had our annual village Surplus Saturday today.
Very limited spare plants or surplus produce this year. Normally people have lots to share but the heat and drought really taking its toll.
Suspect garden centres may do well next spring as people buy new plants to replace those they,ve lost but it,sgoing to be hard not replacing traditional favourites which simply don,t thrive in these new summer heatwaves. But it,s not going to be easy to breed new vegetable varieties which are drought resistant unless we all resort to eating cactus plants.

Disappointing end to my potato digging today. In the last few days I have dug three 10' rows with 10 plants in each. A couple of days ago the Picasso yielded 29kg with very few I classed as 'use first' but today Manitou gave me 21kg and Setanta only 13kg. I don't know anything about Manitou but looked interesting in the garden centre, they've lived up to their description of long oval tubers but there are very few without wormholes. The Setanta are slightly better but still plenty of holes. All in the same bed.

That’s disappointing, Geoff…..my Kestrel has had a very light crop this year.
I used to grow Cara for baked potatoes, but although I would get a good crop of large potatoes, nearly all of them had slug holes in them.