Zucchini, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes - I love June!

 The Patch is full, everything is loving the rain and growing on well. The asparagus ferns are waving in the wind ( I am looking forward to cutting more than two weeks worth next year when they will be grown up!) and the chard, carrots, beetroot, parsnips and fennel are healthy and getting big. We have eaten broad beans and peas, masses of chard and spinach, salad of every sort and french and runner beans, second crop of broad beans and peas are coming up for harvest and meanwhile flowers are appearing out in the potato patch, the onions are swelling and the leeks are fattening....

Here is zucchini Soleil looking twice the size it was a week ago! The rain has got these off to a good start and you can see the first yellow courgettes appearing...I was relieved that the yellowing of the leaves is just the variety - I thought it was overwatering for a moment. 

This Gem Rolet squash is already beginning to climb the steep bank behind its bed - it will have plenty of room there to go mad! It already has a round dark green fruit on it (see photo below) - its a summer squash and I am really looking forward to baking and stuffing these and eating them roasted whole with garlic and butter....

 And here is the round di Nizza (below)- one of the zucchini which didn't do so well last year due to overcrowding I think. Now it has plenty of space and is being the first variety to show its fruit! I hope we have lots...the few we did have were delicious, very sweet. 

 Can't wait to eat the flowers of the zucchini - so very delicious with stamens removed, dipped in flour and fizzy water and salt and then deep fried. It was one of the highlights of last summer sitting in the sun sipping Prosecco and munching on the crunchy flowers....

 Am so thrilled with the Borage! It struggled to begin with with the cold and the rain but it has grown eighteen inches now and borders the path into the greenhouse. The blue of the flowers is so dramatic and the bees love it. The flowers are edible too and so I am decorating with them, salad, cheese platters, fruit salad, new potatoes.....looks so pretty. 

Once inside the greenhouse it is warm and calm. The cucumbers have grown hugely and are covered in flower and tiny cucumbers. I have them in  two pots (and one outside as an experiment which is also doing ok though nothing like as fast as the indoor ones) and staked them to go up to wires which will run along the ceiling of the greenhouse - I am hoping it will be dripping with cucumbers!

Cumber Burpless Flower - so pretty, so delicate and such a lovely colour on a grey June day!

The indoor tomatoes are doing well too - this is Costeluto Fiorentino above and Black Krim below. They are planted in with aubergines and peppers with purple and green basil in between. I am pinching out the sideshoots every day at the moment and the results are that they are about three feet tall already and you can just see the first fruit forming...always a miracle to me. 

 And back outside the runner beans are beginning to flower too!

And climb up their bamboo and string supports - very obliging of them and very satisfying for the builder!

After all the hard work of the spring we are beginning to see the fruit of our labours...and eat it.....and....its well worth it!