Summer Delights

On the plot this week we have wonderfully swelling fruit, ripening fruit and ready to harvest salads and vegetables. We also have lots of weeds in need of attention but we'll gloss over that for now! Also I'm after your help with identifying a fruit on the plot - see further down the post. New beds have been created by Alex, and Imogen has helped with the digging!

new beds and digging

Bramley apple tree

I have mentioned this apple tree before - moved from our garden where it really was a poor sight, now thriving and with about 8 lovely cooking apples growing just lovely.

 Apple tree

 

Pear tree

The apple tree and the pear tree we inherited on the plot are looking like this right now - both promising a bumper harvest, and giving us much food for thought as to how to preserve the harvest. Any thoughts?

We picked our first blackberries this week and they were absolutely lovely, and as you can see there are many more to come.

Blackberries

The Peas are being harvested, and these french beans won't be far behind. I love the flowers and the pods of this black variety. Planted in between them are these celeriac, and a couple of cucumber plants.

 French Beans and flowers

These Oca interplanted with tomatoes are doing very well this year, I love these leaves,

Oca

Our harvest box filled up with chard, beetroots - red and white, kohl rabi, courgettes, spinach and beet leaves, peas, blackberries and a few apples that needed thinning out. A good days work, ably assisted by Imogen who enjoyed pulling up the beetroots to be amazed at the lovely globes. She needed a little help with the kohl rabi as although they grow above the ground the roots really do anchor the plant, we pulled those together!

 

 

lovely courgettes for tea!

And using a new camera that has a panorama setting I took this picture which I like - saves me trying to "knit" together pictures in photoshop. Pity I hadn't realised before the trip to the allotment that I had the resolution on the camera set too low.

Panorama of the bottom half of the plot

I have also taken a photograph of this shrub/tree that has these fruit growing on it - it's something that was on the plot when we got it but has only fruited this year - probably because so much other stuff has been cleared from around it (similarly we have a grape vine that we discovered last year). So I'm guessing it's a plum or damson, any thoughts? The leaf is the smaller one to the left of the fruit or above (larger leaf is the hazel tree it adjoins).

Mystery?

So what Summer delights do you have to share?