Allotment Update

Sinead & Aoife with armfuls of Lavender this evening.I am going to try drying it in bunches this year as there is only so much I can do with the dried flowers.
I have one bunch already in a vase on the windowsill to see if it will dry there.
It struck me this evening while cutting it that there is a marked absence of bees around, last year I could hardly get near it as so many bees had taken it over each day.

White Ghost pumpkin,according to the pic on the label it has a white sheen to the top of the pumpkin.

Calabrese is setting nice large heads, we have cut 2 so far and they are delicious.I cut a cross on the stem after taking the head, it is supposed to encourage side shoots to grow.
I gave the whole brassica bed a dose of rhubarb tea which is recommended to discourage white fly as the smell is foul and it confuses them?!
It is made by soaking rhubarb leaves in water for a few weeks and the resultant sludge is rhubarb tea!

Remember my mutant beans? They have now been put out on the plot and are beginning to climb the canes.They are Blue Lake climbing french beans, free seeds from Garden News.

Lazy Housewife beans have been moved to a hen free zone and are showing signs of recovering from their hen pecking.

The carrot bed got a make over too this evening.I had enviromesh covering it but the parsnips were being squashed under it so I surrounded it instead to deter the carrot fly.The carrot fly is not supposed to be able to fly higher than 20cms so this should be more than high enough to stop him in his tracks!
I set more carrot and parsnip seeds a couple of weeks ago but germination is slow enough.I gave the bed a sea weed feed to help things along

Our courgettes are very slow to produce this year, due in no small way to the lack of heat and sunshine and the nights are fairly cool for this time of year.

Bok Choi, our first year growing this veg, I think it was under a bit of stress early on as I was not sure what to do with it!
After thinning it out and feeding it ,it began to look like the picture on the plant label.Some of it has gone to seed with these lovely yellow flowers.

Potatoes?! The foliage has turned yellow but there is no sign of blight either on the leaves or the potatoes which we are using daily.

We have 2 cucumber plants in the greenhouse and this one has little embryo fruit on it.
We will not have a tomato glut this year by the looks of things, lucky to have a decent supply at all.Some green tomatoes but unless we get some sunshine we won't be picking ripe red ones off the plants.

Onions,another disappointment this year! They have not grown to the size of last years and a lot are going to seed so I bent them over and we will just use them once they have dried out.