I've been a terribly tardy blogger - I admit it, but what with work, holidays, more work and more holidays, it's been a squeeze to keep on top of things at the allotment, and given the choice of keeping order among the veg or writing about it, I think I chose wisely since we sat down to our first fully-homegrown meal tonight.

I've had lots of help (thanks to Michelle my onions have remained amazingly weed-free and Sue did wonders with the parsnips.  My father spent an incredibly hot afternoon strimming the paths, and everything in the tunnel would of course be dead if it wasn't for the fabulous diligence of my marvelous mother in law and her regular watering).

How things looked in July 

Mrs H filling her collection of vessels with water.  Note  the short grass, thanks to my dad. ( It doesn't look like that now!)

In July our pickings looked like this:

July was hot hot hot and we ate everything raw from the allotment in salads.

Carrots continued to be a fabulous crop and I grated them in salads with various lettuce leaves, onions, sliced baby courgette and tender broad beans.  I made a minty dressing - a summer twist on a classic vinaigrette and didn't cook anything for weeks.

Broad beans - what a surprise!  I didn't think I really liked them but planned to throw them in soups and stews because I'd heard they were easy to grow.  In fact they were a fantastic crop - absolutely delicious when small and tender served raw.  I think I planted them out at just the right time too (February) because no one else seems to have had such a successful crop.

The yellow courgettes appeared more forthcoming than the green ones, and some of my turks cap squashes were starting to form.

The cabbages were looking a lot healthier than they are now in fact.  This is probably due to the long hot summer being great for cabbage white butterflies.  The caterpillars are now turning the few cabbages I have to lace.

The runner beans were slow-growing but I was hopeful they would take off  with water and sunshine.

The sweetcorn was forming cobs...

The peppers were starting to flower and the tomatoes were beginning to fruit.

The new addition of a grape vine had settled into the polytunnel climate. 

Outside the potatoes were looking good, and I harvested the three I'd planted in a compost bin which had turned into enough spuds to feed six of us. The shallots and onions were looking healthy and the few red onions that decided to go to seed and started forming flowers I picked quickly and ate them in salads.  

We harvested Sue's garlic which had separated successfully into nice fat cloves, and by the beginning of August, we'd finished the broad beans and just left a few in their pods to grow next year.

I'm going to write about this month (August) in my next blog which will come hot on the heels of this one because I don't want to bore myself or anyone with too much information... I'll just leave with a cliffhanger - not only did we eat our first allotment-only meal tonight, we also sampled a vegetable like nothing any of us had ever tasted before - it was truly amazing and on it's own made gardening for food totally worth it... what could it be????

To be continued...