Fruit is ripening in the garden

Fruit is ripening in the garden. Despite it only being early August, the apples on my dwarf Katya apple tree are ripe enough to eat already.

I know, because one fell off and I tried it. I'm not going to pick any more just yet though, as I think the fruit could have been both sweeter and larger, so I'm hoping that's what will happen to them over the course of this month.

I had my first raspberries this week too, as an accompaniment to some American pancakes with yogurt.

I've also been producing a lot of courgettes. This one reached the size of a marrow before I had time to use it.

They creep up on you so quickly. One day you think you haven't got any courgettes and the next day you notice that there had been one hiding there the whole time and it's now huge. The courgettes are now a lot easier to find, though. The rain brought a lot of powdery mildew with it, so I had to remove a lot of the courgette leaves to get rid of it. If you leave any leaves with even tiny spots of it, it spreads until the whole lot is covered. The courgette patch is now looking pretty bare, but the individual courgettes are easier to pick out. Interestingly, so far this year powdery mildew has mainly affected the courgettes and barely touched the squashes.

My banana peppers have also ripened, but were a bit of a disappointment. Even ripe it tasted like a boring, shop-bought green pepper. I'm hoping it has some further ripening to go.

I can also report that my sweet corn is not quite ripe yet, the hairs (the silk) at the top probably need to go browner than that. According to this website, I should have been paying more attention to when the silk first appeared, as corn is usually ready 20 days after that. I need to puncture a kernel of corn and look for a milky liquid inside. Clear liquid means I'm too early and no liquid means I'm too late. I guess that means we need to eat the corn soon. Especially as it definitely tastes better when I eat it too soon than too late.

And finally, here's a picture of a bee enjoying one of my sunflowers, just because bees and sunflowers make me happy.