I spent about 3 hours picking all this today, and then spent the rest of the day in the kitchen, washing, peeling, chopping, sorting, blanching, freezing, and making chutney. Growing your own can be very time-consuming. The beans, purple climbing french beans, flat-podded climbing french beans, runner beans and dwarf french beans, are at peak production at the moment, and I can't keep pace with them. We are going away this weekend to my sister-in-law, so will take some with me, then our kitchen will be out of action next week while we do some work on it, so I won't have an opportunity to cook or even to blanch and freeze any beans, so the neighbours will have to have the rest.
With all the extra growing space I have this year I have inevitably overdone it with certain veg, namely potatoes and beans. It's quite fortunate that I lost a number of courgette plants in the cold weather, otherwise I would be over-run with those too. I have decided that next year I will probably reduce the amount I plant, and just spread it out more. I have found it quite difficult moving about between things this year, I have packed it all in a bit too closely!
Weirdly, the blight which was threatening to take hold a couple of weeks ago seems not to have spread, indeed it even seems to be 'cured'. I cut off all the potato foliage, except for one row, which still looks the same as it did two weeks ago. Only one tomato was affected, and no more since then, and there has definitely been no more spread. All the remaining fruit looks fine, the foliage also looked fine, although I have now cut most of it off to encourage the fruit to ripen.
The first sowing of sweetcorn has a couple of cobs on each plant, but I am still waiting for them to ripen. The second sowing looks really healthy, and hopefully the warm weather will continue long enough for it to reach maturity. The flowers are already emerging at the top.
The autumn raspberries are starting to get going, but the summer ones haven't done much at all, I think I will have to replace them this winter.
