July 2010

1 Lovely - starting the month off with a treat - dinner at the Five Lakes Camelot restaurant with two friends.  One of Camelot's special offers, 3 course meal with a half-bottle of wine and followed by coffee for only £25 per head.  Delicious!
Harvest:  12.5 oz courgette, 60 oz strawberries
2 After gym, the Tesco Legability shop for all the remaining bits required to feed and water 30 people on Sunday.
Harvest: 1st two tomatoes, 12.8 oz courgette
3 I've been busy in the kitchen cooking two savoury loaves - a courgette loaf and a sundried tomato, basil & caper loaf - for tomorrow's Legability event.  Caroline & Ollie came to stay overnight and Caroline picked strawberries while I watered in the tunnel.  Finally gave Caroline her belated birthday presents, a stretchy knit top made by my good self and a set of Jean Patrique knives in a rolled up pouch, just perfect for her cookery course starting in September.
Harvest:  2 courgettes (28 oz), 59 oz strawberries, 1 cucumber, basil, mint, tomatoes
4 Our first Legability event of the year.  Click here for information on the event, results and photos.  We raised a record £356.62 for The MS Society, so I guess everyone enjoyed themselves.
5 Time to deal with the strawberry glut!
Preserving:  16 jars of Strawberry Rhubarb jam
Harvest:  16 oz courgette, 30 oz rhubarb, 15 oz red, white & blackcurrants
6 Up came the broad beans and peas today.  Scorzonera seeds planted where the peas were and 3 pepper plants (so far) where the broad beans were and carrot seeds resown in the veg garden.
Harvest:  2 cucumbers (6.25 oz), 2 carrots, 12 raspberries, 6 oz peas, 11.5 oz beans, 92 oz broad beans
7 Goodness, a little rain, not a lot but one less watering job to do later.
8 Trike adventure!  I pedalled around Thorndon Country Park on a tricycle, doing some geocaching with Crow.  A new experience for me and I'm thinking of investing in my own trike.
9 Crow's off to the Ross Traders Rally and I've got friends round to stay.  Boo hoo, 30C today and far too hot for me.  I'm such a party pooper huh?
Harvest:  15 oz courgette, 15 oz strawberries, 18 raspberries, 1 cucumber, basil
10 Provisional results show Crow & partner came 12th in the rally.
Harvest:  2 oz haricot beans, 10 oz courgette
11 Time to start using up courgettes!
Baking:  Red (& white & black) currant muffins
Preserving:  8 jars Sweet Zucchini Relish
Harvest:  2 courgettes (50 oz), 2.7 oz tomatoes, basil
12 Happy today because it's raining - cooler and less plants to water!
Harvest:  1 cucumber (3 oz), basil
13 Aaah, 17C and cloudy, how wonderful.  A bit of time required today to cook and freeze some of my harvested vegetables.
Preserving:  3.5 litres veg soup
Freezing:  3 double-portions haricot beans, 5 double-portions broad beans
Harvest:  1.5 oz raspberries, 3.75 strawberries,  2 cucumbers (3.75 oz), 1st green pepper, 12.5 oz haricot beans, 25 oz courgette
14 We attended the 4th Essex Geocache meeting this evening.  A a social event in a pub in Rayne with two new caches launched there.
Harvest:  1 cucumber (2.25 oz), 5.2 oz tomatoes
15 Spent some time listing items on eBay as I've been neglecting this recently.  I've started going through my wardrobe to try to sell some items that either no longer fit me, or I am unlikely to wear again.  It's quite a time-consuming process, selecting photographing and listing.
Harvest:  2 courgettes (22 oz)
16 Current knitting is a polo necked jumper for my second great-nephew-in law.  Both boys have August birthdays. 
Card making is on the up as I'm uploading finished cards to the craftsuprint sight as they offer commission on the sales of designs you have illustrated.  (You may have noticed the link to this site on my home page.)  It's never going to make me a fortune though...
17 Veg garden tidy-up: stripped out last years' chard and sowed carrot parmex and turnip seeds.  My potato plants seem to have died before they flowered so I dug up two completely dead plants and got almost 4 lb of potatoes.  What a relief and not a bad return from two seed potatoes.  We had some with dinner and they are nice and tasty.
I also learned how to dry parsley in the microwave, so I've got a jar to last through the winter.  I was impressed how fast and easy it was and the method should work for other similar herbs.
Harvest:  16 oz chard, 8 oz tomatoes, 8 cucumbers (23.6 oz), 2 gherkins (5.45 oz), 62 oz potatoes, parsley, salad leaves, rocket seeds
Preserving:  1 jar of dried parsley
18 Gardening work in the tunnel today, a complete weeding and potting of new strawberry runners.  I removed the two black beauty courgette plants as they were not growing and used the space to plant my second winter squash in the tunnel as it was in a pot too small for it.
Harvest:  3.75 oz strawberries, the last ones I think), rocket seeds
19 Harvest:  3 courgettes (24 oz), 2 cucumbers (5.8 oz), 2 gherkins (3.25 oz), 3 oz tomatoes, 2.45 oz haricot beans.
20 I did the most dangerous job in my garden today - harvesting gooseberries and weeding all around the gooseberry pot.  Those vicious spines got me again and again so my arms are sore and scratched, but the gooseberries look good.  They are plumper and sweeter than I've ever had, courtesy of the new bush which has sprouted where the tub branches met the ground.  I also picked raspberries and sowed seeds for swiss chard, cutting celery and more carrot parmex.  Then I tidied up the strawberry plants and started pinching out the cordon tomatoes in the greenhouse.  It was very hot and humid, cloudy but still 28C, but I found the heat a little less distressing because I wasn't in the sun.
Harvest:  58 oz gooseberries, 21 oz courgette, 6 oz haricot beans, 3 oz raspberries, mint.
21 Pretty standard day:  gym, swim, cooking, knitting, card making.
Preserving:  3 litres of courgette & mint soup
Harvest:  2 courgettes (46 oz)
22 Seemed to spend most of the day preserving as I'm very slow at veg chopping.  Then it took me an hour just to top and tail all of the gooseberries.  Finally I labelled the 42 jars produced this month & last.  Meanwhile, Crow took off to Heathrow to welcome Bex back from her Peruvian adventure.
Harvest:  3 courgettes (54 oz), 5.5 oz tomatoes, 2 gherkins
Preserving:  4 jars of cucumber relish, 5.5 small jars of gooseberry dessert
23 A spot of bad news today has meant we have had to cancel Sunday's Legability event.
24 I'm using my own compost now, rather than shop bought and it seems to be ok.  Today I sowed another pot of summer savory and transplanted mint seedlings into another large pot.  Then I transplanted my last two cabbages from the potting shed into the tunnel and sowed chard seeds in the spot where I had removed the bolted spinach.  I've neglected watering in here since 18th and as a result, some of my new strawberry plants have died.  Yet again, I've had no luck with purple sprouting broccoli and removed some which had not produced even a serving but had then immediately gone to seed.  Not sure where I go wrong with this, but I've never had a successful crop.
Harvest:  32 oz courgette, 5.5 oz beans, 4.5 oz tomatoes, 4 cucumbers (12 oz), 2 gherkins, basil and a handful of raspberries (1 oz)
25 I fell into the world of Blood Bowl, Necromunda and Malifaux this morning.  I was buying some silica gel a bags (for use in geocaches) and the seller had a carry case for "Bloodbowl team, Necromunda, Malifaux".  Just had to google it.  It seems these are some kind of war games played with figures and dice or playing cards on special backgrounds and 3D terrains.  That was enough to satisfy my curiosity.
A touch of gardening cutting foliage from courgette and squash plants, pinching out cordon tomatoes and harvesting potatoes.  Followed by eBay listing as it's a free listing day.
Harvest:  2 courgettes (64 oz),  18.5 lb potatoes
26 Watered the garden unnecessarily this evening as it's now started raining.  Still, the rain is much overdue and will do my veggies some good.
Made three lovely cards, even if I say so myself.
Harvest:  1 cucumber (8.7 oz), 1 gherkin (1.35 oz), 8 oz plums
27 Had plans for gardening today but it's raining (hurrah!!!) so not good for digging up potatoes and working in the soil.  Had to do long overdue housework instead.  Despite the rain its still very hot and humid.
Harvest:  4 cucumbers (14.3 oz), 2 gherkin (3.65 oz), 8 oz tomatoes
28 Bex is staying with us until Friday, so we all went to the gym this morning then a bit of harvesting and courgette puff pastry pie for dinner followed by blueberries and ice cream mmmmm......
Harvest:  14.5 oz blueberries, 2 cucumbers (8.3 oz), 2 gherkins (2.1 oz), 8.5 oz tomatoes
29 In the veg garden, I planted out the remaining seedlings - leeks and all but two of my tomato seedlings.
I've finished knitting the second boy's jumper but still got stitching up to do.
Harvest:  2 gherkins (3.5 oz), 1 cucumber (14.8 oz), 1 courgette (10.8 oz), 3 cooking apples (9.5 oz), 10 oz beans
30 A sorry sight greeted me in the potting shed this morning.  One of my bell pepper plants had fallen from the top shelf and completely destroyed itself.  So, I've got 7 green peppers, which I would have normally let ripen to be red or yellow.  No matter, they'll still taste good.  Luckily, nothing else was damaged in the incident.  I had to enlist Crow later to help me rearrange the potting shed pots to avoid further accidents.
Harvest:  1 courgette (10 oz), 1 cucumber (6 oz), 1.75 oz tomatoes, 7 green peppers (33 oz)
31 Bit of a lazy day, bit of eBay listing, bit of card making, then off to a party in the evening.  Even had a day off from watering as it has rained a little than been warm, cloudy and humid.