Beneficial beasties come to the garden

Bee on an onion flower

Bees of course are always welcome.

Ladybird

Ladybirds have also arrived. This is excellent, as I have a major aphid problem and have been going round spraying everything with diluted washing-up liquid (probably about 1/2-1 teaspoon per litre of water), which kills them, but is very time consuming. By the way, because I live in the EU where using untested pesticides is illegal and washing-up liquid is an untested pesticide, if anyone asks, technically I'm washing my aphids not trying to kill them. The fact that a washed aphid is a dead aphid is purely coincidental, honest.

Harvesting enough vegetables to actually be saving some money

I've been growing enough salad that I've only been having to supplement with tomatoes, houmous and toast for some weeks now, which I reckon is a good couple of quid a week, but just recently I've got to the point of harvesting onions, peas and courgettes too. The onions are still a bit on the small side, but other than that they're fine, I harvested a yellow one and a white one (which is surely at least 60 pence worth):

The problem with the onions is that several of them decided to flower instead of producing a decent sized onion (it's one or the other with onions, no having your cake and eating it):

Onion flower

Onion flower

I've also harvested a rather oversized courgette,

which I used in a warm, lemony courgette salad fir lunch, a recipe adapted from this one, due to me not having all the ingredients:

Ingredients (for my version):

2 normal-sized/1 huge courgette(s)
1 tbsp olive oil squeeze of lemon juice
1 garlic clove, crushed
some basil leaves,
roughly torn

Method:
1. Use a vegetable peeler to slice the courgette(s) into wide strips, discarding the central, seedy part. 
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the garlic, and fry over a medium heat for 1 minute.
 3. Add the courgette strips and cook, stirring regularly, for a further 1-2 minutes until the courgettes are slightly softened.
 4. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and toss the basil through.

It was quite alright and really not a bad way to eat courgette. I think lemon zest (like the original has) would probably have been an improvement, but I only had lemon juice in a bottle and no actual lemons.

I've also been harvesting peas. You need a heck of a lot to get a meal's worth. Here's a picture of the amounts of peas I got from a recent harvest on the left (just about two portions) and the pods I shelled them out of on the right. It was practically every pea on all my pea plants (both sorts) that was already large enough for me to harvest. I don't get how they can sell frozen peas for so little money. They must definitely be able to shell them mechanically, otherwise even frozen peas would surely cost a fortune, as I reckon shelling them took me at least ten minutes. Based on the price of frozen peas, I'm thinking that's probably only 40 pence I've saved myself there, although luckily I had some of the peas back when they were still mangetout, and they sell for more, so that's probably about £1.40, which is heading towards me having nearly made half the price of the seeds back!

The two sorts of peas looked more different than I expected when cooked. I think the paler ones are probably the Carouby de Maussane (mangetout) peas, as they're the ones with the paler pods.

Growth spurt in the garden

We went on holiday last week and when we came back we found the garden looking like this:

Garden on 28 June 

Firstly I'm thankful that nothing died in the week we were away and that it got by on the bit of rain we had. But secondly, look how much it's grown since I took this photo on 16 June,  just two weeks ago.

Garden on 16 June

In particular,  my runner beans are now huge and covered in flowers.

Runner beans in flower

One of my courgettes has practically become a marrow.

Courgette plant growing a courgette almost the size of a marrow

And my cucumber plants have flowered and started producing little cucumbers. 

Cucumber plant in flower

First mangetout and pea harvest of the season

Yum.

Mystery seeds revealed

A couple of months back I found a foil wrapper of seeds with nothing written on it, or at least nothing that would tell me what was inside. It took a good couple of weeks before curiosity got the better of me. I wrote "MYSTERY" on the wrapper,  wrote the same thing on a stick and planted a pot of them hoping to work out what they were when they grew.

It turns out it's rocket (probably). My husband thinks it looks like it, I (braver) think it tastes like it. If this is true it's highly fortuitous. My other rocket, the variety that looks like the rocket you get in the shops, has almost entirely failed to grow or died when still a seedling and I've now used the last of my seeds having made four attempts to grow it. I've planted some of the mystery seedlings where my other row of rocket was supposed to be. This means I do have some rocket, but I'm also a bit dissatisfied with both varieties. The one that looks like shop-bought rocket has largely failed to grow or died (I do have a couple of seedlings that I think may be this rocket that are still alive), the mystery one is coarser than shop-type rocket and most of it bolted pretty fast last year. I hope I find another variety next year, as we eat a fair amount of rocket,  so it's a handy crop.

Our first pea pod

We have our first ever pea pod. Now all I have to do is remember not to deadhead it. Seeing it brought out all my deadheading instincts. Clearly I haven't fully made the transition from flower gardener to vegetable gardener yet.

Seedling timelapse

I missed the impressive few hours when it burst through the soil and grew to that height, but here it is turning towards the sun then growing a tiny bit.