Lettuce with a gladsome mind

Heather's lettuces glistening after the morning rain :

We were dodging the showers down at the patch this morning.

Heather picked a good supply of broad beans and peas, then thinned the carrots... so we will be having some fresh picked veggies with grilled pork chops for dinner tonight.

I planted Cherokee Trail of Tears beans next to the sweetcorn in the Three Sisters bed. I have given them some sticks as additional support until the corn is high enough for the beans to climb up. The squashes will then snake around them to provide a cover that should reduce the amount of weeds.

The strawberries are producing some nice fruit, but the yields are not very good. Many of the plants have been taken from runners over a couple years, so I intend to plant some new stock in the Autumn.

We had been removing the flowers from the currants and gooseberries, but must have missed some of the gooseberry flowers. They fruited and, because they were not netted, pigeons caused damage to the lower branches and these will now have to be trimmed off.

The blueberry bush has some fruit which we hope to be able to pick and the raspberries are producing some new canes which should yield some good fruit next year.

The year-old Sturmer Pippin whip has produced some apples and we have thinned these out to leave just a couple to develop. The Egremont Russet whips were badly damaged by caterpillars earlier in the year, but now seem to have recovered and we are now thinking about training the three whips into a cordon.

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