Bumper crops

I know i've been very lapse in my blogging recently, especially of garden post but things have been fairly busy and also fairly stressful. There have been a couple of events, with one big one still to come, which have left me a little preoccupied to say the least.

Most of the garden is doing really well. The red cabbages still aren't really hearting up and i had to get rid of one of the whites too, i'm presuming it was some kind of cabbage root fly, although it seemed to have eaten through the stem rather than the root but i guess it may have worked its way up from the root.

The runner beans are slowing down rapidly after a mammoth start. The are still flowers and beans on there but just not as many and with the wind and rain they are having to fight hard to stay on. But like I said, we did have a bumper harvest to start them off.

And then the tomatoes..........we seem to have a cereal bowl full of cherry tomatoes every day right now! Each day i go out and pick the ones that have rippened during the day. I'm making sure i practice picking them with the caylx still on so that i remember to do so for the show on Monday (which i have finally sent the entry form in for - more about that later) plus i think they keep a better flavour that way, like when you buy them on the vine from the shops. Sadly with the lack of British sun as usual i don't think any of my vines will all be ripe at the same time, and also with the rain some of them seem to be splitting so with the weather as it is right now i'd rather bring them in and finish ripening them indoors for a day than lose them.

Hopefully soon i will have my first couple of larger tomatoes ripe. One is outside on the mystery variety plant (It's not cherry or beefsteak like all the other plants!) and the other is only ripe because its been in the fruit bowl with some bananas, and the only reason it's there in the first place is because i picked it to stop the blossom end rot spreading and took a chance to see it it would ripen. However i'm not entirely sure how much of it i will lose when i cut into it.

I had a second little cauliflower, possibly slightly bigger than the last one but certainly not by much. It still went nicely in my cauliflower cheese that i was making (with a lovely goats cheese and creme fraiche sauce).

Any finally with the lack of butterflies around this year i thought i'd share this lovely photo i captured of a Peacock Butterfly who i spotted sunbathing on the window sill or the front room window.