Harvest is coming

It's taken me a long time to get much to eat out of the garden this year, possibly largely due to slug and snail problems, but harvest is finally coming. Many of my apples are ripe. I know this because not only are they bright red, but they keep falling off the tree, and I keep eating them.

The raspberries are now producing more than I can usually eat in a day – I stir them into porridge – and I am freezing the rest.

The patty-pan squashes have also started producing edible squashes. You're meant to eat them when they're small. They have an incredibly boring flavour, so you have to put them with something more interesting. I've been having them with green beans and pasta and pesto and the few tomatoes that have ripened. It's nice to have a second sort of vegetable alongside the beans, and the plants seem to be producing fairly reliably now - not in the quantities a courgette would, but they're much lower FODMAP than courgettes.

My tomatoes have mainly yet to ripen, but they're getting pretty big, so I live in hope that they will soon.

The Maxima squashes are also coming along. This is my biggest one, and if it's anything to go by, the name is no lie: they're going to be huge.

I've accidentally also grown my most interesting sweet corn yet:

It's without any leaves covering it and it made me realise that each of the silks that stick out of the top connects directly to a different kernel of corn. It'll be interesting to watch it ripen.

The garden as a whole is looking dry anywhere I haven't watered (i.e. the grass), but I'm no longer worrying about whether I'm going to manage to harvest anything.