July

Help yourselves - there's a glut...

Help! We are experiencing a courgette glut! No sooner did our ace designer Ann go on holiday than her gorgeous yellow courgette plants started producing masses of banana-coloured fruits.

Although several of us have been helping ourselves daily and sharing the bounty around the building, there are still too many to handle. We've deliberately left one to grow enormous just to see how big it can get...

It's been another warm, dry month here and although we are lucky enough to have taps fed by a spring in the grounds we are still desperate for rain as the ground gets drier and harder. Luckily our vegetables don't seem to have been too badly affected, and we seem to be harvesting more than last year.

Because we've been a bit cleverer when it comes to successional planting, the gluts (apart from courgettes!) have been spread over a longer period of time so we are enjoying a longer harvest.

So what's good at the moment? The rainbow chard is fantastic and brightens up both plot and dinner plate, we have potatoes galore, lots of lettuce and the globe artichokes look striking too.

Carrots have been a notable failure, but Jo's beetroot have been a brilliant success! We're hoping that the dwarf and borlotti beans will be ready to eat soon, as well as the kale and cavolo nero.

In the meantime, I'll keep on digging potatoes. Does anyone else find that no matter how careful you are, the fork always seems to spear your biggest spuds?