Some things dying off, others still growing

Did some more weeding at the allotment on Sunday. Things are looking in better condition than ever. Some plants are starting to slow down or die now. The French Beans have been producing a bumper crop for weeks now, but have finally started to produce a much smaller number each time I visit. The pumpkins are nearly all ripe, apart from 1 or 2 (see above) but in the last couple of weeks their plants have really started to die and now there's practically nothing left of them. It's also interesting to see how quickly the squash plants have gone from looking completely green and healthy to very much on the way out. The photos below were taken just 21 days apart (left: Sep 10th, right: Aug 20th) at exactly the same place. Quite a change in 3 weeks.


The salad crops however are still doing well (see below left). The lettuces are mostly bolted, not many good ones left now, but the spinach is looking better now than at any other time over the summer (must remember to sow them late in future) and there are still radishes on the way and pleanty of spring onions left in the ground. I sowed another half row each of Spinach and Rocket in the hope of keeping the salad crops going into the Autumn. The 'Ambassador' peas that I sowed exactly 2 months ago (11th July) are very nearly ready for picking (see below right).


The winter cabbages (planted out 3 weeks ago) are growing well and looking very healthy having survived the earlier attack of the catepillars and the second cropping potatoes (planted end of July) are looking extremely healthy (see below left) and the first few flowers have started to appear on them (see below right).


There are pleanty of all 3 squash varities (Sweet Dumpling, Festival, Butternut) ready for picking, so we're using a few per week at the moment (see Festival and Butternut squashes below left). In a few weeks time I expect all of the plants to have died off, so at that point I'll harvest all of the squashes to store in the garage over the winter. After having had several green peppers, and a couple of black ones too, there is finally one pepper that is starting to turn red (see below right).