Holidays are not good for your garden!

A few days ago I arrived back from a short holiday and quickly realised that the end of July is not a good time of year for a gardener to go away. Despite having arranged a number of friends to do a spot of watering, the weather conspired to provide something like perfect growing conditions. Upon my return, the lawn had grown about 2 inches, half my cauliflowers had gone beyond their best, the peas had come and gone and my courgettes were the size of marrows. To add insult to injury, the weeds had also enjoyed the wet weather and I’ll need several hours just to get thinks back in shape.

Despite all of this, the garden has managed to produce a number of firsts for me.

• Ridge cucumbers, very tasty despite their odd appearance
• Tomatoes, I harvested my first small tomatoes having never grown them before.

The sweet corn that was planted in paper pots is doing amazingly well after the recent rain, some of the plants are over six foot tall and all have formed the beginnings of cobs. The stems have started to fall on the red onion and the garlic, although the multi-sown Bedfordshire champions seem to still be growing. The first chillies should be ready within the next week or so and it looks as though I will have a bumper crop this year. Looks like I’ll be eating a lot of curry this year!

I have found a new cold frame for the site, a FSC wooden cold frame with a double lid.