You work the soil, plant little seedlings and then you wait a while and then little crops emerge and you skip about the plot with your little trug picking bits n bobs over a few weeks. Truth of the matter is on my plot most things arrive at the same time and they want to be picked NOW.
One day my courgette plants were producing little sweet yellow courgettes and a few flowers that I could pick and eat too. Leave them another day and lo and behold the grow monster had been and these little sweet courgette have turned to marrow sized baseball bats. How did that even happen? Go away for a week like I did and you come back to a plot that has decided it could take over the world without you. I reckon that if I left it completely my plot and especially the monster courgette could be growing all the way into other people's patches joining forces to create a super breed.
After a week away my bean patch which had just been happily creating tendrils around a bamboo stick became a jungle of flowers and beans. I have been picking them every day, dwarf beans appearing as if by magic and purple beans appearing in places you know you only picked yesterday. I am sure this is no big news to a seasoned grower but to me its like some dark magic is at work.
Luckily the Vegan is always happy to take a glut of stuff and I have had to be quite creative with all my veg. Soup, lots of soup. Lot of roasting too in between salad and curries. It was a surprise to me how I could not bear to waste even a seed of what I have picked. I've nurtured these plants for so long so to just not use them or chuck them away saddened me. It's also a wake-up call as to how much produce did go to waste in my household when I just went to the supermarket to buy it. Much less of a connection to what you are eating.
The weather has been especially hot, this is good news for sun worshippers but not so great for me as you have to water the plot twice a day otherwise it starts to look Saharan and the sunflowers hang their heads in shame. Luckily the hosepipe ban was lifted before it even started as lugging a watering can although doable would have also been a pain in the arse.
Tomatoes are also a pain in the arse. I've grown a few plants from seed, staked them and fed them but I don't have a greenhouse on the plot and they need lots of food, light, water/not water etc etc to keep them in good nick. I confess I just can't be bothered with the faff, this year anyway. Some produce has done really well, others a disaster. I'm perfectly ok with this as I have more of an idea of what works for me in the future except as one plot owner helpfully suggested "Won't be the same next year, this weather has done all sorts to the fruit and veg"
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| Courgette on steroids |
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| Proud crop lady |
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| Not so proud crop lady |
