Well the raspberry cane which took so long to get going has finally given up the ghost.

All this Grow Your Own stuff is really difficult. Planning has been an epic fail. Planning, or lack there of, is the reason why we'll have no raspberries, pumpkins, pish poor onions, no spring onions....... alas, the list of failings is quite long. Still, at least we've learned from them, and hopefully, next year, things will be more successful. Hopefully.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but the Brussels Sprout plants are beginning to form little buttons. Sprouts for Christmas! The leeks are still going strong, and the Maris Piper spuds are ready for digging up. I'm tempted to do it now, but we've had a fair bit of rain. Or is that an excuse.......? Ok, Ok, I'll do it now.....

Bought some autumn-planting white and red onion sets. They are known as Japanese onions, and will go in in the next week or so, to hopefully produce tasty onions in early summer next year. I think that as the pumpkin is unlikely to produce fruit so late in the season, I might pull it up next week, and dig the large raised bed over, adding lot of compost, and plant half the red onion sets in there, and maybe a few cloves of the garlic I bought too.

I was toying with the idea of giving onions a miss next year, but will be trying again, purely because I'm pretty sure it was my fault that this years failed so bad. They're maybe golf ball size, and the tops have flopped over, so they won't be growing anymore. I'll probably lift them tomorrow. I really liked the idea of growing our own onions, so I will be sowing some main crop onions on the shortet day, to hopefully give them the longet possible growing season. Not sure which variety to go with yet.

It will be a mad few weeks once we have harvested what we can. We need to enrich the soil, and improve drainage. I'm sure the best way of doing this will be by using raised beds. I have finally sourced a company on-line which deliver compost. They deliver for free which is even better! Will have to have a look round for some wood to make the frames. We would like to edge the raised beds with gravel on the top of weed suppression membrane. I think this would give it a really nice look.

Well it's mid August now, so I suppose it would be useful to reflect on the growing year so far. I need to work out what grows well in our garden and plan for next years crops.

Onions: I decided against buying sets (small, immature bulbs), and went for seeds instead. The variety I chose was Ailsa Craig, which promised large onions. Well, they were sown 18th April, and looking at them now, they won't be providing us with large bulbs. I think this is probably because we did not enrich the soil prior to sowing the seeds. OK, we did nothing to enrich the soil. My fault. Too eager. Anyhoo.......

Leeks: I'm actually quite proud of these little guys! Sown at the same time as the onions, our Musselburgh leeks are a little more than pencil thickness, and have plenty of time left to grow even thicker. Will definately be growing these again next year.

Parsnips: Dreadful germination for the first batch (Hollow Crown variety), sown around the same time as the onions and leeks. Apparently, parsnips are not the easiest of veg to get to germinate, but I think we have only eight plants out of a whole packet of seeds.

More Parsnips: So, because of the piss poor performance of the Hollow Crown, I bought a packet of a different variety (White Gem), sown on my birthday (2nd. June), without much hope to be honest. We had torrential rain which flooded the patch that these seedlings were growing in. Infact, they were under water for two weeks or more (yes, my fault again for not improving drainage), but they have grown better, with much more vigour than the other kind. Which makes me wonder, is the usual poor germination due to the growing medium being too dry? Maybe they need a boggy area to flourish.

Sweetcorn: Sown 29th April, I managed to raise nine plants. They are all flowering, and there is some evidence of tiny cobs forming - brilliant!

Swede: These are the "Best of all" variety, originally sown 11th. May. They have done fine so far, nice and leafy. I didn't know swedes are members of the Brassica family, hence them being muched on by Cabbage White caterpillers. Will be netting these next year for sure.

Tomatoes: The ones grown in the borders are pretty much devoid of folliage, I think more than likely to do with being water logged, but they have a few green tomatoes on them, which will hopefully be OK. The two plants I grew in pots are going great guns; covered in fruit.

Beetroot: These "Bolthardy" beets produce lovely golf ball sized globes, perfect for roasting.

Brussels Sprouts: Really need to protect these from the caterpillers. The netting covering them at the moment still allows the parent butterfly to stick it's bum through the net and lay eggs on the leaves.

Runner beans: These have been really productive for over a month now. The more you pick, the more they produce! Lovely red flowers too. Will definately be growing these next year.

Courgettes: Not sure about these yet,I had to move them as they were under water. They're starting to grown again, but are only about a foot high.

Carrots: We have had some lovely juicey Early Nantes. They taste so much better freshly picked than supermarket bought ones.

Peas: There's nothing quite like picking a pod off the plant, and eating the sweet, plump peas inside - it is very heaven!

Radishes: These were lovely, definately worth growing again - a firm favourite with the kids.

Disasters:

Howden pumpkin : drown

Hunter Butternut squash : drown

Webbs Wonderful Lettuce: we managed to eat the ones we netted (tasty they were too), however, sparrows ate a lot of the others. Oh, and slugs.

Pumpkin: was given this one, and promised the ladies son that I would take good care of it....... I did rescue it from drowning completely, but now it is suffering powdery mildew. I removed the effected foliage, hoping that the fungus will not spread. Fingers crossed.

Spinach beet: Tasted of absolutely nothing, so we didn't bother eating it.

Spring onions: Unsure why they failed to grow.

Bingo and Mr. Cluck have been with us for almost four weeks. Got them a day before Meg's birthday from a fella on Gumtree.

We had so much rain yesterday that our seedlings are mostly still under water. The heavy clay soil we have is only allowing the water to drain away very slowly, so I think we might lose some of the plants we have worked so hard to grow. It emphasises the importance of looking after the soil, enriching it so it will drain freely.

I brought in one of the tomato plants and have noticed that it has the beginnings of fruit growing!

Finally made a break-through with Humphrey. I had almost given up all hope of getting him to trust me, and to not try to take chunks out of my fingers whenever I put my hands in his cage. I popped him in the ball (which he'll walk into on his own). I usually give him 10 - 15 minutes running around on the floor, and then open the ball and let him walk out of it onto my chest, and then he'll get back in his ball and I'll put him back in his cage via the ball. Saves my fingers that way! Tonight, Humphrey decided he didn't want to stay in his cage, and immediately turned around and climbed on my hand, up my arm to my shoulder. He seemed calmer. I put him back in his cage, but he doesn't want to stay in there, so for the past 20 minutes, I've allowed him to come out when he wants to, and each time he does, he shows even less fear. I'm delighted! I thought Humphrey was not going to be the kind of hamster you can play with. It's only took the best part of two months to get to this point though haha

It seems Dandelion is starting to feel his age, sleeping more. He has started to lose fur on his sides, in the area of his scent glands, and he's drinking more than usual. I fear his time maybe drawing to an end.....

Have been worrying myself half to death about blight. It would be so unfair for our potatoes (and tomatoes) to succumb to that nasty thing, so fingers crossed it doesn't happen - especially as this is our first year.

I thought I would update my blog with some new pictures! So without further ado......