Fruit and veg to go!

Kevin and I spent about 4 hours out on the allotment today, we were the only ones out there until late afternoon when Mike and Christy came along.The veg harvest for today was potatoes in the bag, I think these are the Homeguard.5 courgettes,2 cauliflower,2 globe artichokes,Kevin's crop of onions and thinnings of carrots and white turnips, not a bad days bounty!His Mom cooked one of the cauliflower for dinner and was singing the praise of organic veg.I know by now that what we grow tastes so much different from what we buy but the cauliflower is a real eye opener as to what fresh veg should taste like! I did not put in too many plants ,not wanting all of them to produce together but so far they are developing two each week which is fine.Kevin with his crop of onions which he is very proud of, he has better onions than I have! I showed them how to put in one onion set and the kids did the rest themselves.
Aoife's pumpkin the biggest of them on the pumpkin patch so far.All of the plants seem to be only producing female flowers and most of the pumpkins are dying off at golf ball size?
One of their sunflowers has opened , there are sunflowers all over the plots and when they are all in bloom will be stunning. We are having a sunflower competition as well as the pumpkin competition.
The runner beans are in flower but are slow to bulk out, they seem to be the same on all of the plots that have them this year.Another casualty of the inclement weather but they may catch up if it improves over the next few weeks.
The lavender plants are next to the greenhouse and are in flower, these are new plants this year as I took out the ones I had for the last few years they got woody and too big for where they were. These will be harvested soon and dried to make lavender sachets.I showed Kevin how to peg down his strawberry runners into new pots for next year.He has 6 new plants , here he is watering them carefully.
I weeded the leek bed and earthed up the first row of leeks.They have been in place for some weeks now and have suddenly thickened up. I still had some in a seed bed and have now put them into their final bed.I made a deep hole with the shovel handle, held the plant in the hole with just a couple of inches above ground and filled the hole with water.
I thought I was seeing things! Embryo Brussels sprouts showing on our plants. This bed will now get some serious weeding and netting ,hopefully tomorrow.
The fruit harvest, the branches of our one blackcurrant bush were weighed down with nice fat black fruit and we spent nearly an hour picking them.It yielded 1,800 grms and a lot more to ripen soon.100grms of raspberries ,the end of our harvest from our bushes this year. The mange tout were donated by Mike, we did not grow these this year but after our pea disaster we will have them in next year.
I was browsing through blogs last night and came across this recipe for raspberry swirl muffins by mangocheeks on Allotment2kitchen.I thought just the thing to use up the amount of raspberries I had.I did not have muffin cases and could not get any in nearby shops so mine are large queen cakes but are delicious!
The raspberry ones turned out so well I thought I would try them with the blackcurrants, they also turned out lovely. The blackcurrants burst open while baking and look and taste yummy!
I had the 2 globe artichokes earlier, just cooked in boiling salted water and dipped in melted butter, delicious but each time I have them I wonder how anybody figured out how to cook and eat them?!