Growing Weather

29th July 2016:

The produce is generally growing well but then so are the weeds. We have had sufficient rain but then some lovely warm weather to swell the crops. My husband has been out early in the mornings to avoid the heat of the day and generally keep on top of the crops and weeds.

We pulled up the broad bean plants last week as they were starting to develop rust which is quite common in bean plants. It meant that we had a mound of beans to use once we had stripped the plants. Fortunately there were also sufficient courgettes ready so I made masses of broad bean and courgette soup (one of the recipes in Easy Tasty Healthy) I make the soup using only a small amount of liquid then add the rest of the stock when I’m ready to use the frozen blocks. It means that less room is taken up in the freezer.

I quite like having gluts of produce as it means I need to think of creative ways to use up veg and fruit. That’s how I ended up creating the broad bean and courgette soup. This year I’m into broad bean, pea and mint hummous which is rather good and will no doubt appear in a future recipe.

Although the courgettes are producing, we should at this point have masses. They were planted amongst the sweetcorn and French beans – the American style of planting (see allotment news for 3rd June). We normally only plant two courgettes which produce more than enough for the two of us but this year there are five plants so we should be over-run, but only the ones on the south side are producing well. The others seem to be too shaded and are not growing well.

All in all though, we have lots to eat and we are hardly buying any vegetables at the moment.