21 July 2009

Any day now...

There's a sense of anticipation about the vegetable garden at the moment. Not a huge amount is being harvested: the peas have stopped producing and a lot of the lettuce has gone to seed (there is more growing, but it isn't big enough to harvest yet). Broccoli, carrots and beetroot are the main things that are pickable right now. The warm-weather crops are not quite ready to harvest, but I have a feeling that it won't be long before we are struggling to keep up with them all.

Last night we had half an inch of rain, which was extremely welcome. It's been very dry for nearly two months (there have been some impressive storms just to the south and just to the north, but no rain over us) and recently we've been having to water the whole vegetable garden every evening just to keep the plants alive. The huge water tanks we've installed in the barn and greenhouse over the last two years have made that possible: our water situation in 2007 was so much worse.

The tomato and pepper plants in the greenhouse are producing a lot of fruit, but none of it has ripened yet. These are the appealingly-shaped fruits of the tomato pepper:

I'm also growing cayenne peppers and Corno di Toro Rosso (red bull's horn) peppers. These are almost being swamped by the cucumber plants that are in the same bed:

I'd almost given up on finding any actual cucumbers, despite the rampant growth and the presence of many immature fruit. Then I found this lurking on the floor:

Is there any logic to the way that cucumbers develop their fruit, or is it just random as to which one grows to maturity first? I like the way the cucumber is shaped like a question mark: as though it would like to know the answer to that, too.

In the vegetable garden these crops will soon be ready to harvest:

Fennel and French beans:


Courgettes/zucchini:


Corn (four cobs on this plant - is that a record?!):

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those peppers look amazing, well it all looks amazing actually. I have never had any luck with peppers. They produce fruit which then drop off before maturing. I have kept the plants I have though because there is another growing season for peppers here in the fall so I will keep my fingers crossed.

Linda said...

Looks like great profusion to me, from the perspective of our dismal summer in Scotland. Your peppers are so chubby - they have much more style than the uniform supermarket ones!