It’s been another hot dry week, which has meant one thing, a lot of watering! Especially the beans.
The Borlotti beans are developing well, they are beginning to fill out.
It’s really important to keep them well watered during this phase to help the beans swell up. Although slugs and snails are now proving to be rather troublesome. I’m having to remove them daily. Some pods have already sustained some damage.
The runner beans have been prolific and they taste great.
We’ve been picking and picking and there are plenty more flowers, so more beans will be on the way, and for some time by the looks of things.
I didn’t think that the runner bean plants would survive when I planted them, but they have. They’ve endured gale force winds, aphids and high temperatures. As I didn’t think they would survive I sowed some French bean seeds, Cobra and Violette, around the same wig-wams. We have just started to pick some French beans too. I will definitely consider planting French beans with runner beans again next year, obviously staggering the sowing dates. Runner beans followed by French beans a few weeks later.
The peas have come to the end of their season. We picked the last of the fresh peas, and the first of the pea pods that I shall use for saving seed.
We harvested some of the Pink Fir Apple potatoes. Each plant produced a good number of potatoes. Some were small and a few had scab. But on the whole, it wasn’t a bad harvest.
I checked the parsnips. They seem to have survived the aphid attack and the foliage is growing well
and we can see the start of parsnip roots beginning to form and grow.. very exciting
And finally, flowers, the poppies flowered this week. A beautiful purple flower, my favourite.
And the velvety rich chocolate Black Magic sunflower is also in full bloom. Delightful!
welovegrowingstuff 
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