shake your money-maker

I haven't yet mastered the skill of staggering produce and we've had a bit of a hungry couple of weeks. All the lovely peas have finished and died away and our courgette plants were looking a bit sad in their pots, with their fruits all going a bit yellow and squashy at one end, so we've planted them down at the allotment instead in the hope that the extra root space will give them a new lease of life.

Not everything is going wrong though- my cucumber plant, which had been badly scorched back in May's heat wave, has really picked back up again over the last two weeks and now has its first flower. I'm religiously watering it at least twice a day in the desperate hope that we might have a home-grown cucumber soon.


The 'Money Maker' tomatoes are looking pretty good too- I have been picking up all sorts of tips to help them along and have been loyally pinching out the side-shoots and gently shaking the plants at dusk to pollinate them. Hopefully my hard work and slightly eccentric behaviour is going to pay off.


I've spotted our first runner bean- it looks a bit stringy at the moment, so I'm hoping it will fatten up as it grows.


Some of the runner bean plants aren't looking so happy. I keep removing these funny little black bugs off the underside of the leaves.


Just look at the beautiful purple flowers on the dwarf beans though, who'd have thought so many brilliant colours would appear in a vegetable garden.


I'm looking forward to more vivid hues when the rainbow chard shoots up over the coming weeks- even the seedlings look pretty!