Still plenty going on
After the strong winds in July, the sunflowers have survived and put on a fantastic show. Someone has most amusingly created a smiley face on one of the sunflower heads. The sweetcorn was almost blown horizontal by the winds last month, but we piled earth up around the base and it has recovered well.
Fortunately we’ve had some well needed rain which has meant less time watering and more time for harvesting and sowing seeds. We’re continuing to harvest courgettes, runner beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and potatoes.
There are still plenty of vegetables and salad crops which can be grown at this time of year to allow for produce up to and through winter. We’ve sown some seeds directly into the soil and some in modules in the glasshouse including mizuna, giant red mustard, winter salad leaves, pak choi and choy sum. We have also planted second cropping potatoes, and later on in the year, we’ll be sowing broad beans, peas and hardy spring onions and planting out garlic and onion sets.
We cut back the summer fruiting raspberry canes removing any weak, short and diseased ones, leaving the remaining canes approximately every 10cm.
The pumpkin, squashes and gourds are fruiting well in lots of weird and wonderful shapes. The 'Atlantic Giant' is looking promising; I’m looking forward to see what size it grows too. We’ll show some pictures of the pumpkins and squashes when they’re harvested.