The greenhouse in July surrounded and enveloped by borage and bees, cornflowers and onions. Some mornings I was overwhelmed by the humming of the honey bees as I plunged along the path to the door! I can't imagine summer without that wonderful cornflower blue and hope that they have self seeded themselves. 

Inside two cucumbers in pots fill the southern end of the greenhouse, the staging has been removed to allow me to plant eight tomatoes, aubergines and peppers in the beds either side with basil in between. Its all growth in July with the very first fruits forming...

One of the first tomatoes - a beautiful Costeluto Fiorentino snuggling into some fresh new basil. Grown from seed this variety does well in the greenhouse and has a classic Italian salad tomato flavour and firm flesh - delicious! So beautiful that I had to push myself to cut it..

The other two varieties that I am growing in the greenhouse are Sungold pictured above and Black Krim which ripened later on. Both were wonderful. The Sungold were prolific and we had bucketfuls of the sweet orange cherry tomatoes for months on end. See the August posts for pictures of the Black Krim....wonderful colour and flavour!

This is Greek Basil - one of three types of Basil that I planted amongst the tomatoes and aubergines. The other two were Sweet Genovese (a classic Italian basil) and a purple one. The good thing about the Greek one is that it is a bush variety and goes on longer than the other varieties - we should be able to pick it right through the autumn in the greenhouse. There is absolutely nothing like the smell of tomato plants mixed with the heavenly whiff of basil when you water the earth! And the basil keeps the whitefly away...

Cucumber flowers lifting their golden heads to the sun...the promise of crisp sweet fruit to come!

And the soft petticoat like mauve flowers of the aubergine plants drooping shyly under the covering of soft floppy leaves. The greenhouse is a happy place to be with so much anticipation of harvest. I love spending time pinching out, watering and feeding and knowing that the rush of harvest/preparation/cook/freeze for the winter is ahead of me. Now in July all is peaceful and the growth and swelling fruit is doing its own thing. The tromboncino courgettes below are doing exactly that just outside the door...its all go in the Patch in late July!

Unusual star veg - kohl rabi and artichokes

Two stars of this summer - kohl rabi and artichokes. I think Kohl rabi is very underrated. It is simply delicious and I wish I had grown more of it. This is the purple variety Purple Density which is a bit later than the pale green one and next year I will grow both. It is a brassica and so is sown and planted as such We just steam it and eat it with butter and it tastes of peas and asparagus and a tiny bit turnippy...so, so good. You can eat it raw too in salads. Simple and  yummy. 

The other star is the globe artichoke. What a fantastic vegetable. Having spent a lot of time in Italy I have grown to love these wonderful tasty thistles and have cooked them all summer. I grew them from seed in the greenhouse and they have cropped for months. I grew three varieties, Gros vert de Laon which is an old french variety with enormous hearts and Violetta di Chioggia which is an early purple Italian variety which you can eat whole when they are young and Green Globe which has been prolific. See more pictures in later posts but here they are growing on in the terraces which I heavily manured last autumn. Once germinated they were trouble free. I will grow lots more as there are so many different ways to eat these...see the recipe section for ideas!

Fruit and flowers - gorgeous July!

 The harvest in early July is so beautiful. Bright and fresh colours, new leaves and textures, nothing overblown and we are not yet saturated and spoilt with summer fruits. The excitement about pulling beets and digging up new potatoes is still strong - this is what all the planning and preparation are all about. We didn't need to add anything to this table for our meals today....there was enough from the patch....except cream, butter and olive oil.....

The first year for this redcurrant bush so not many fruit, but it was so exciting to see the tendrils of glistening red fruit hanging like earings from the bush....and then using the little pottery collander I made to pick them. The fresh green leaf was irrestible too!

 Meanwhile more fruit is forming. The autumn raspberry canes are shooting now with a promise for September fruit, the blueberries are green and fat on their willowy stems, and the new apple trees have their first fruit. Below is Fiesta, a descendant of Cox and in its first year it has produced about twenty baby apples. I have pruned some of them off to make sure that the tree is able to use most of its strength in establishing a strong root system, but couldn't resist leaving a few to try in the autumn...

And the flowers are beautiful too! The pathway to the greenhouse is lined with bountiful borage and bright blue cornflowers. Every morning the sound of the bees greets me as I open up the greenhouse windows. There must be at least fifty here at a time, flying in from the hive in our neighbour's garden. One day we will have our own hive....I long to taste the honey these little workers are so busy making, but am very pleased at all the good work they are doing pollinating courgettes and squash!

One of the most rewarding annuals to grow are sweet peas. I sow them in the autumn in pots in the greenhouse. They are growing in containers now on our deck and the smell is intoxicating. They are wildly climbing up our kabin and the more I pick the more they come. A good feed helps. So much pleasure from one little seed for months and months...

Here is a bunch of flowers I put together to welcome my daughter in law home from having her third baby. The rose is Joi de Vivre which seemed highly appropriate to celebrate another tiny grand daughter's safe arrival. It has been a fantastic rose, blooming its double apricot heads all summer despite the difficult weather conditions. The Cosmos is called Antiquity and is a very early dwarf variety which I planted into pots on the deck. I love its Venetian, crushed velvet colour and being dwarf it coped with our spring gales wonderfully. Add sweet peas, cornflowers and borage and it was a pretty gift. 

July is a fantastic month - some of the very best veg and fruit are coming in now and in abundance. But the best thing is the salad. After July it tales off a bit, maybe because I am not very good at remembering to keep sowing successionally. But in July we ate bucketfuls of fresh salad mixed with fresh peas and beans nearly every day. Here is a day's picking on the steps of our airstream waiting to be washed and dressed. Next month the tomatoes will be ripe and overwhelming and the courgettes, but July is the salad month and we loved it!

Summer Onion Harvest

Very chuffed with the two rows of Radar onions that I planted in the autumn. I harvested them in the third week of June and am drying them now on racks before storing.

I dug them up very carefully so as not to bruise them and was delighted with the size of them - there were some huge ones amongst them.

I filled a barrow with them and brought them in for drying as the weather is still very unsettled. I can dry them under the cover of an open barn and just drag them out into the sun when it is shining (not often at the moment!)

I used the metal shelves of the old plastic greenhouse that I used to grow seedlings in last year before I put in our permanent greenhouse - good to find such a good use for it. 

 Radar will store well for about three months..just into the autumn. They are beautifully filling a gap...just when the leeks and last years onions have run out and the winter stores are low. Perfect timing. 

Aren't they beautiful? Can't wait to string them up and hang them in the shed!

The English strawberries are the sweetest!

Despite the dreadful wind and rain that we have been having my strawberry patch has survived and produced lots of sweet tasting fruit amongst the mouldy berries hanging forlornly on the vines. I reckon I have picked and enjoyed the same amount as I have had to chuck on the compost heap, even when they were hanging off the ground they have gone brown and soft in the wet. 

However there have been enough to make a Sunday teatime treat and a few pots of jam!

This is a simple recipe which can be made in a few minutes and is perfect for freshly picked strawberries or raspberries and currants. I have made it in the winter with frozen raspberries too and it works very well if you defrost the raspberries on kitchen paper first to soak up the juices. 

I use a fatless sponge recipe ( we add the fat later with ladles of freshly whipped double cream!) which is so easy and light. It needs to be eaten the day you make it or the one after as it doesn't store. It takes five minutes to prepare - all the same numbers so you can make any size you want. This cake is 4 oz caster sugar, 4 large eggs, 4 oz self raising flour. You whisk the eggs with the sugar until fluffy, sift and fold in the flour and pour into a greased and lined tin (the egg makes it stick) and put in a medium oven until the cake is firm in the middle when you press your finger gently on the surface - usually about half an hour. When it is cooled on a rack I spread home made jam over it and place on the fruit and sprinkle with icing sugar. It works really well with different jams - blackcurrant jam or jelly is delicious with raspberries for example... a stand by pud which never fails to have the wow factor!

A few of my Alpine strawberries self seeded into the strawberry bed - I moved them out last year as they were taking over and put them in pots. I think I love these little semi wild fruit the best - their flavour after a day in the sun is just fantastic, almost the taste of flowers, perfumed and sweet. They are delicious in salads, on their own with lemon and sugar or in any strawberry jam or icecream. 

Here is a small gathering I made to put in my yogurt for breakfast. I made this little pottery collander too - it makes gathering and washing small quantities of fruit such a pleasure. A quick rinse under the tap and then let them stand whilst you shower - such a delicious breakfast!

Spring flowers

I put these irises into pots in the autumn and we were delighted with them. They filled such an empty gap from end of the first spring bulbs (daffs and crocus)  to the baby annuals I planted into the containers on our deck. They co-incided with glorious spring weather too and formed a lovely screen where we sit to observe the countryside. I will definitely put more in this year. 

 The dark blue Irises are my favourite...I want a whole bank of them next year!

You can see the sweet peas using the tall stalks to begin their climb - the two together were very statuesque - there is something lovely about sitting next to a wall of flowers...and the smell was gorgeous!

At last the blue perennial geraniums have flowered! I put them in last year and the growth seemed so slow but they were worth waiting for....

Sweet peas that I grew from seed.  I sowed them late summer last year and kept them in the greenhouse over the winter and planted them out in March into containers on the deck. The smell has been wonderful and we have had loads of them - I'm trying to remember to pick them before the pods form so that they continue...

The light coming through the pinks and mauves is stunning...

Such an elegant shape and I think these two tone ones are my favourites....

Cosmos Antiquity is so pretty - its a dwarf plant for containers and the rose pinks and burgundy's are like the velvet of a Venetian velvet - it is aptly named.

 I always grow the little viola heartsease. I love its simplicity and bravery flowering in the cold - I am hoping that these will continue to flower through the autumn. Their little heart shaped faces are so cute.

And lastly I wanted to show you the new apples on our fruit trees. Planted in the autumn, Fiesta (shown here) James Grieve and Bramley seedling are all doing well. As are the Merryweather damson, the Oullins Gage Greengage and the Pear tree Comice de Doyenne. There are blueberries on the bushes, the Autumn Bliss raspberries are coming up well and there should be black and red currants.....more of that later! I love this time of year.