Garden update

It's been a while since the last garden update. Some things turned out successes - courgettes, marrows and tomatoes have been prolific. Just wait until you see what the Culinary Consultant made using one of the gigantic marrows! Our freezer is bursting at it's seams with tomatoes in all different guises. 

There is also a load of plums waiting to become jam once we have finished the current batch. Our first plum jam turned out really good. We managed to get enough figs for a small batch of fig jam as well, which turned out fantastic. The cucumbers were good, and as you can see from the pictures, there will be loads of sweet peppers as well. 

But there were also things that didn't turn out quite as they should. My attempts at growing lettuce were soon devoured by slugs. The grapes all got some weird disease and got mouldy. Birds ate all the raspberries and cherries. There were a few apricots so we finally got to try them, and lots of pears are starting to ripen. 

We have learned a lot and I am already excited to plan ahead for next spring. By the way, all of the photos were taken two days ago, so the flowers are still beautiful, I love that there is still some summery colours in the garden. 

My own courgette (the only one I managed to keep alive
 from seed) is still producing and we have collected seeds
 for next year from this prolific individual hoping for similar
 yields next year.

We had a good yield of cucumbers
and a few more to harvest.

The cucumber still thinks there is time to make more fruit,
I hope it's right.

Finally some of the peppers are starting to get ripe, we
almost despaired that there will be no peppers at all.

Chillies

Most of the sweet peppers are small, but there is
one very impressive specimen.

The dahlias seem to thrive still, although most other
flowers seem to have given up for the season.

There is plenty of apples, unfortunately they are all
quite bad with spots and bruises. But they will do for
 stewed apple, just as they did last year.