Peak garden

The garden has reached the best it's probably going to look all year, give or take a bit of weeding and grass trimming.

I realise I judge this heavily on the state of the cucurbits. I like it after they've become really big, but before they get powdery mildew. Notice my sense of inevitability here? Powdery mildew is coming. And one reason for this is that they've got so big that I can't cope with the work of carefully spraying the both sides of all leaves with either a mixture or milk and water or a mixture of neem oil and water. It's not the price of the milk here, it's the number of spray gun squirts and how much the pump action makes my hands ache after a while.

This year the squashes are even bigger than usual because I trained some of them up canes and they love it. Or at least some of them do. I tied two types to canes. The ones that grabbed the canes for themselves with their tendrils I kept on the canes and the ones that drooped and didn't grab on I removed from them. I'm hoping being up on canes with more air around them and away from the ground will give them some additional protection against powdery mildew.

In case you're looking at the leaves and thinking, "she'll be lucky, I can see signs of mildew already", fortunately for me that's just variegated leaves on the courgettes.

What's particularly nice about these plants is that the fruit is bright yellow, making it easier to spot that I have something to harvest.

I will be getting my first harvest from them pretty soon.
Some of my outdoor tomatoes are also getting pretty huge, but refusing to ripen.

It's the same story in the greenhouse, where I have huge plants and lots of green tomatoes but nothing ripening yet.

I'm also growing plenty of peppers and chillies (I'm not entirely sure which of them is which, as I had a bit of a label mix-up while repotting), and all the plants have produced at least some fruit, but only one plant has anything ripening.

I'm thinking of expanding my range of greenhouse plants next year. Chrysanthemums are a must for their deterrence quality, but I also want to get aubergines back, as I so enjoy looking at their furry leaves and flowers. I'm also thinking of growing something like melons as a completely different type of crop. I'm going to have to look into what my options are in the UK.

Garden growing gloriously

The garden is growing gloriously. I think it's liking all this heat. Previously the beans and the cucurbits had resolutely been staying tiny. Now they're taking off. My squashes are climbing up their poles - or at least the winter squash Sweet Dumpling are. My Bulgarian one, which produces absolutely huge squashes, seems less keen on climbing and is not grabbing the canes for itself.

My beans are also happily wrapping themselves around canes.

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The raspberries have also excelled themselves and despite officially being autumn-fruiting, have produced their first couple of raspberries already.

I've also finally got round to clearing away the large clump of sage and marjoram or possibly oregano, even though they were still flowering, as they were a haven for slugs and snails and nothing was lasting near them. However, I decided it was high time for the kale to go in the ground, as being in pots seemed to be massively restricting its growth. The kale plants in the picture are still so tiny, you probably can't see most of them without enlarging the image. If it's big enough to be easily visible, it's probably not kale.

My tomato plants are also growing.

As are their fruits, although nothing has ripened yet.

I love the shape of this variety. It's called Marmande and it's ridged like a pumpkin. I hope they taste as good to eat as they look. Certainly, in a not in the least bling taste test comparison with Sainsbury's Taste the Difference, their strawberries were huge and beautiful, but bland and a bit tough. Mine were sweet, delicious and tender, but misshapen and small. I know which ones I prefer.

Photo from early June when the strawberries were still flowering