What are you harvesting today?

Ooh, cucumbers already CH! My plants are growing well, but no sign of any fruits yet.

Smug salad! Love that
We have tiny cucumbers - known as 'winkies' in this house. Tomatoes are still only flowering - hope we have an Indian Summer or I'll end up with not-a-lot.

Peas! Tutankhamun peas! They are absolutely gorgeous. Taking huge willpower not to eat them all straight off the plants.

Sounds yummy.

Seven courgettes, a couple of strawberries, a few sugarsnaps, more peas. Did they grow fat since yesterday, or did I miss them? Oh, and some lettuce leaves. And tomatoes. And a radish.

And tonight we ate some potatoes harvested about a week ago. All completely free! I had found a sprouting potato in the veg tray back in the spring. Planted it in a pot in homemade compost, and fed with dilute 'worm tea' from my wormery. A nice little crop of new potatoes with our salad tonight.

My first tomato.
For the first time since I started growing Sungold (and I can't remember when that was) it was not a Sungold. It was a Bloody Butcher. I've been largely underwhelmed or disappointed by my seeds from DT Brown but these are the exception. First to germinate, first to flower, first to fruit and first to ripen. They're a medium sized tomato with good flavour - quite acidic. They're non F1 so you may be seeing some seeds in the seed swap.

I have three courgette cakes in the freezer, I had courgettes for lunch yesterday and the day before, I'll have them for dinner tonight, I've put them in the dog's food, given some to my neighbour and there are seven picked and waiting. Heeeeellp!

Any anyway, who put that yellow courgette seed in the seed swap? The plant is massive - at least five feet wide. The upside is it's really easy to see the courgettes, so none get missed. Oh! Perhaps that's not an upside then.

French beans have taken me by surprise. Didn't think they were anywhere near ready, but picked enough for a small meal. Have stopped buying tomatoes for three weeks now, likewise any green veg, as the sugarsnaps (nearly finished), then peas have kept us well provided. Noticed runner beans just starting - much of the early flower didn't set due to the hot, dry weather.

I'll raise you 14 (courgettes waiting to be used) all off one polytunnel plant. The outside ones aren't doing particularly well.
I've finally got the mangetout and French beans under control - still picking daily but a manageable quantity.

Courgettes. About half a metre long. You can't turn your back on them for a week, can you ? Happily the plant is still producing sensible sized courgettes too. Often they seem to stop when you miss one and it gets huge. This plant is in a lot of manure, so maybe that explains a lot.

I can't be having marrows. Too many memories of marrow stuffed with steamed sausage meat which my parents produced for us as children. Utterly disgusting.

I always let one grow into a marrow, to make marrow and tomato chutney. It's our good, all round basic chutney and is absolutely delicious.

Oh, CH, how I remember the stuffed marrow we were subjected to as children.Bleurgh. Ours were stuffed with mince - beef or lamb, not sure.

I'm not a fan of stuffing anything, I don't see the point. You might as well have the bits separately on a plate. Marrow is too watery to stuff anyway.
I too let one grow big for sticky pickle.

Courgettes here too, by the metre (I'm sure the skin is too tender for them to be marrows!) Also french beans (Kew Blue), runner beans and tomatoes. Also cauliflowers - my lesson for next year is not to plant 12 cauliflower plants at the same time (especially now there are only two of us at home). I have frozen industrial amounts of cauliflower cheese and spiced cauliflower soup,and Mr D examines our meal anxiously every evening looking for hidden cauliflower! Well, I thought he liked it...

Well done for getting decent cauliflowers. I managed one tennis ball sized head last year. I've got some plants in this year but they seem to be all leaf at the moment with no sign of anything else forming. We'll see.

Oh, I wondered where you had been, Dandelion. Submerged in cauliflowers, obviously.

I felt a bit glum (does anyone say that any more??) when I read about the stuffed marrow recipes not being very nice, as I had just bought all the ingredients to stuff an out-sized courgette. Fortunately it all worked out OK (I didn't steam it - perhaps that made the difference) or maybe it was a more up-to-date recipe. The stuffing was made from the hollowed out flesh of the courgette, all chopped up, sausage meat, chopped red onion, breadcrumbs, parmesan and seasoning. After stuffing the aforementioned vegetable, I covered it with a garlicky tomato sauce, and put cheese on the top to brown for the last ten minutes of baking. We both liked it (fortunately! - though we live within walking distance of a decent fish and chip shop...)

Oh I don't ever think I minded stuffed marrow, D, and have made it as an adult. Stuffed courgettes - now that's something else altogether. Reading your ingredients, I realised that they're similar to a recipe I invented many years ago and still use. No sausage meat, but mushrooms instead, and don't bother with any sauce. Baked in oven or remoska for 20mins, and a delicious lunch. Had some 3 days ago.

The courgette was about 14 inches long and nearly three inches in diameter - I'm insisting that it wasn't a marrow as the skin was tender and perfectly edible! The next courgette, waiting in the porch, is even bigger!

PeasFrenchbeansSugarsnapsCourgettesTomatoesStrawberriesRaspberriesBlackberriesApples and one (my one and only) blueberry.

I made vegetable curry last night with homegrown onion, garlic, chard, French beans, peas, courgette (of course), potatoes and carrot. The chilli powder was from last year's chillies too.

The beetroot is looking ready too. Time for pantzarosalata - a Greek dip of beetroot and walnuts.

I did a home grown veg curry a couple of nights ago - your Kari Sayur recipe. It's got a permanent page now in my pink book as it's definitely a keeper. I never thought I would say it but I could do with some slightly hotter chillies.

I discovered a friend at school who hasn't grown courgettes this year - she has enough for the next few weeks now!

Picked my first cucumber today. They are very slow to produce anything - variety Beth Alpha from seed swap. Anyone have experience of these?

I've not had much luck with getting Beth alpha to germinate. Last year I got one and this year none. I recall my one plant last year didn't do very well at all.

I've had one cucumber so far with plenty more coming on. It was from a bought plant as all my seeds bar one failed (and I did 2 sowings.)

Have had one small, very knobbly, cucumber and I can see another ready to pick. Fresh and crisp but not as 'cucumbery' tasting as others I've grown. Still picking broad beans though getting to the end now. Have quite a few very green tomatoes. Hoping they'll come through-last year got blight and lost the lot.