Keeping a tight rein on powdery mildew

I was wrong in my last post. I thought my garden had reached its peak and it was all downhill from here.

This week in the garden

That was because I feared the threat of powdery mildew and what it did to my cucurbits last year. This year though, forewarned is forearmed and I've been keeping right on top of it. I'm watering most days when it doesn't rain (particularly in the morning now, as I've heard that watering in the evening increases slug damage, and also aiming the hose at the soil near the roots and avoiding wetting the leaves as much as possible). I've also been pulling off all leaves with any signs of it, and so far it's not spread much, and the cucurbit patch looks like this.

Squash and cucumbers growing along the ground

I think I should probably have them up on canes, but I've run out of canes, so they're crawling across the grass instead. I know from last year that grass loves having cucurbits climbing all over it and grows long and green and healthy under them, so the only problem this is creating is the big mow I'll need at the end of the season.
Powdery mildew looks like this:

If you leave it, it will eventually spread to cover the whole leaf in powdery, white mildew and then every leaf on your susceptible plant, like this:

Then this:

I am currently controlling it by ripping off the leaves I find it on. I figure, so long as I leave each plant with at least 70% of its leaves, I'm doing more good than harm by removing affected leaves. Alternatively you can spray them with neem oil, but I find that less effective than ripping the affected leaves off (I should really be cutting them off carefully with scissors, as you don't want to shake them and get spores everywhere). Once you've removed the leaves, you need to put them in the bin or the garden waste that the council collects, as if you put them in your compost, you'll just infect your compost and any plants you put it on. I'll probably try neem oil as a last ditch attempt once the powdery mildew's taken hold, but, based on last year, I think at most it will make it spread more slowly, not stop it.
The cucurbits are finally beginning to produce decent sized fruits. I ate an undersized cucumber last week.

And this week they're bigger than the cucumbers you get in the shops already, so Greek salad of mainly tomato and cucumber for me for lunch.

My courgettes are getting there as well.

Monty Don says we're too pick them as soon as they're ready as they become marrow-sized in the blink of an eye. I think I'm going to leave this one another couple of days though, as it's the only one that hasn't been eaten by slugs or just fallen off, so I want it to be big enough to provide me with a meal's worth of courgette by itself.
I also have my first red tomato, although absolutely all the rest are green. I don't know why this one decided to go for it on its own, although I'm planning to eat it soon in case it's the only one I get (I've had tomato disasters before).

I don't even know if it's gardener's delight or moneymaker, as my tomato patch is far too much of a jungle to tell which stem comes from which plant and the labels are in any case buried beneath mounds of foliage.

Lots of green tomatoes, not very much ready to eat

My tomato plants have grown huge. I'm a little worried they've grown too big, they've spilt out of their allocated area and are crowding out the onions and the radishes. This is fine if they're going to use the space to grow me tomatoes, but my fear is that they've instead put all their effort into leaves and aren't too interested in fruiting. So far, all my tomatoes are still green and tiny. I was away on holiday when Monty Don said I should be removing surplus shoots and by the time I got back they were massive and everywhere.

In fact, I'm generally not getting much food from the garden at the moment. I was getting quite a few peas, albeit never truly enough for two portions at the same time, but now most of my peas are affected by little worms that the Internet tells me are moth maggots and just one of those things peas suffer from.
You can tell which pods have them, they tend to be wrinkly on the outside and to have fuzzy white stuff on the inside, even if the little maggots are not yet crawling out of the peas.

The first picture is barely affected peas, the second badly affected ones. I'm not convinced I have any unaffected peas left, and given that some of the plants are covered in white powdery mildew, it's probably time for all of them to come out and not go in the compost heap.
Still, my raspberries are doing well, despite their inauspicious location, where practically nothing else will grow.

And the stevia, those rather scrappy plants in front of the raspberry are also still alive, even if not much else is down there. I'm not sure what went wrong with my carrots and beetroots, but basically I don't have any despite sowing seeds twice!
My sweetcorn also looks like it's going to be ready soon.

 I'm also hopeful I might have enough runner beans and French beans to eat tonight.

I think the garden is currently probably looking about the best it's going to look this year, I rather suspect it's going to start looking tattier soon. I'm not sure if that's vegetable gardening in general or whether it's just me not putting enough effort in. The problems with my back mean there are some jobs like weeding I tend to avoid doing at the ideal level, although, unusually, I did manage to mow the lawn today and I'm hoping it's not going to have too much impact on my ability to sleep tonight. Edited: the night of sleep could have been a lot worse, so I guess all those workouts I've been doing at the gym are finally paying off and mowing is back on the agenda for me.

Hardly any chicken soup (or the vegan version: no chicken soup)

I made this recipe up a few years ago because I roasted a chicken and didn't want to waste the carcass. It's a lovely recipe, and had my beetroots and carrots not been a complete failure this year, I would have been able to make it largely from vegetables I grow. As it was, I had to buy most of them. But on the plus side, I didn't waste my chicken carcass.
This soup is so hearty, it is possible that "hardly any chicken casserole" might be the better name.
For the non-vegan version, you'll need to start by cooking yourself a roast chicken, then, once you've eaten all but the hardest to access parts of the meat of your chicken, you're ready to go with this recipe. You're using the chicken carcass to make chicken stock by boiling it for an hour and you can do this part as much as a day before you make the rest of the soup, providing you keep the chicken stock in the fridge. I've put the vegan version below the omnivore version.

Hardly any chicken soup

Prep time: 1 hour to boil chicken carcass plus about 30 minutes.

Ingredients
1 chicken carcass from a roast chicken, stripped of almost all its meat but with any leftover skin, fat or juices
4 potatoes (leftover roast potatoes or uncooked potatoes)
1 onion
1 butternut squash
olive oil
1 large beetroot (must be raw, pre-cooked doesn't flavour the soup enough)
1 medium turnip
2 large carrots
2 tbsp chopped parsley
20 shakes of Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper

1. Boil kettle full of water.
2. Put the chicken carcass, including leftover skin, fat and juices, in a large saucepan. Pour boiling water over until the saucepan is about 2/3 - 3/4 full. Bring to boil and simmer for one hour.
3. Remove chicken carcass to a plate and pour the chicken stock you've created through a sieve into the other large saucepan.
4. Pick any remaining meat (not skin) off the carcass and out of the sieve and put it back in the chicken stock.
5. Chop the onion and butternut squash v. small (1 cm cubes). Give the saucepan you made the chicken stock in, but which is now empty a quick rinse. Add about 1 tbsp of olive oil to it and fry the onion and butternut squash in it until soft (this will take about 15 minutes).

6. Meanwhile, peel and chop the beetroot, turnip and carrots (and potatoes if using raw potatoes) into c. 1 cm cubes. The carrots can simply be sliced into large slices if preferred.

7. Bring the chicken stock back to the boil. Add beetroot, turnip and carrots (and potatoes if using raw potatoes). Boil for 10 minutes.

8. Add the fried onions and butternut squash to the soup. If using roast potatoes, crumble these in now. Add parsley, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce.

Serve with bread rolls or bread.

No chicken soup (vegan)

Prep time: about 30 minutes.

Ingredients
1 onion
1 butternut squash
olive oil
1 vegan stock cube
1 large beetroot (must be raw, pre-cooked doesn't flavour the soup enough)
1 medium turnip
2 large carrots
4 potatoes
2 tbsp chopped parsley
20 shakes of vegan Worcestershire sauce (optional)
salt and pepper

1. Chop the onion and butternut squash v. small (1 cm cubes). Add about 3 tbsp of olive oil to a saucepan and fry the onion and butternut squash in it until soft (this will take about 15 minutes).

2. Meanwhile, boil a kettle of water.
3. Peel and chop the beetroot, turnip, carrots and potatoes into c. 1 cm cubes. The carrots can simply be sliced into large slices if preferred.

4. Pour the boiling water into the large saucepan so it is about half full (about 2 pints?). Add the vegan stock cube, then the beetroot, turnip and carrots and potatoes if using raw potatoes. Boil for 10 minutes.
5. Add the fried onions and butternut squash to the soup. Add parsley, salt, pepper and, optionally, vegan Worcestershire sauce.

Serve with bread rolls or bread.