Harvest visit. The runner beans are pretty much done now, but tomatoes and cucumbers are still coming. There’s still plenty of corn to come. I need to remove the ones that have grown weirdly in the tassel; there are about 3 and they don’t have good cobs.

I did some deadheading and tidying today. Some of the lupins have enough of a new crown of leaves that I’ve been able to cut off their old leaves and stalks.

One of the pumpkins has two new female flowers, but I can’t imagine they’ll come to anything.

I mowed the plot and outside the fence as I have family coming to inspect tomorrow. We’ll be giving them a bagful of veg to take with them.

A visit after work to make the bank holiday weekend seem even longer. In the five days since I’d been down, 3 cucumbers had grown to an enormous size. I picked more runner beans, but they’ve about done. However, I’ve fed the beans, tomatoes and cucumbers with tomato food, so they may yet have another little flourish.

The youngest pumpkins have just started to turn yellow. It looks like they’ll be a pretty good size. Number 4 has stayed relatively small.

The volunteer tomatoes have fruit coming, so we’ll probably get some cherry tomatoes from them.

Although there are lots of pears this year, they’ve mostly got this brown scabby look to them. Most likely pear scab, which is hard to control, but I can at least make sure I clear up fallen leaves and not put them on the compost.  There may be some fruit to salvage though.

The sticky petunias are still ok – and gradually this bed, like the others, is getting more and more in need of a weed.

A harvest visit, including the second two cobs. I keep finding these little creatures, including on the sweetcorn. I think they’re just baby earwigs.

We’ve had some good rain over the past few days, so the pumpkins are happy enough without any attention. I just need the green ones to turn orange soon so they can toughen up in time.

I have 7 Jack Be Littles in total, including the teardrop one. There should be a couple of nice identical ones for the girls around the corner.

I strimmed the edges and everything looks super smart now. The strimmed grass was quite long, so I raked it up. I’ve left a few piles of it near the apple tree as I’m getting repeated evidence of having a hedgehog wandering around. Maybe it’ll take the dry grass off to the house under the tree…

I did loads of deadheading up on my ladder for the top of the everlasting peas and was also on all fours to get the fallen apples from out below the tree.

Another harvest trip, this time with Suzy and the baby. The next sweetcorn can wait another couple of days. It’s milky, but a bit watery, I think. More onions have been picked, this time all good ones. Three great carrots – the middle one has a slight twist to it, where it has been growing through the fork of another. That one is still growing – pretty well by the look of it.

I did a couple of buckets of deadheading and tried to push the floppy everlasting peas back onto their fences. The cucumbers now have another level of support and I think I’m now at the point where the ball of string won’t fit between the poles any more.

After missing last week, I fed everything. I gave Bed 6 general feed to see if I can get some more life into those tomato plants. They’re a bit sparse and floppy compared to the much healthier 2 plants in Bed 7. I think the cucumbers and onions were the only things I didn’t feed – the former being too vigorous, and the latter being at the end of their days. I gave the vegetable beds a good soaking. I do actually have one beetroot looking a reasonable size now.

The trellis bed and ledge in particular are bugging me for looking messy and I’m still wondering about my approach for making them better. Maybe there’s a way I can have the taller plants in mulch at the back with a proper delineated front section for small plants. Or just put mulch all along that bed to try and keep it under better control.

I checked the first sweetcorn and found two to take home for tomorrow’s dinner. There’s an odd mix of ordinary big cobs in there as well as some with additional cobs growing right next to them, which may or may not turn into proper small cobs.

The traditional initial plot inspection turned up some surprises: an enormous cucumber among the many younger cucumbers and mammoth new pumpkins from numbers 1 and 4. They both also have other little ones coming on the same vine. They need to catch up a bit in order to ripen before the end of the summer though.

Bed 8 is just now for volunteers. The tomatoes have one fruit so far and it looks like a Red Alert at this point. There’s a self-sown physostegia that I certainly need to save.

Bed 3 is still a bit messy, but at least has some colour. The petunias are horrid and sticky to deadhead, but are flowering quite well now. The white one seems to have some colour in it too. One of the zinnias has died but the other is fine.

The harvest was massive. The big basket was absolutely full of runner beans – still trying to get on top of the overgrown ones. I’ve started harvesting the onions. A few went to compost, but there’s a reasonable harvest so far. Just not award-winning.