..... is for Cucumber.

Here's Xanthe's cucumber helpfully teaching her the alphabet. I'm not sure that teaching via vegetables is the way to go though, as it appears to have glossed right over A and B.

Did anyone else tell that silly story as a child, you know, the one that goes "It was a dark, dark night, in a dark, dark house ...." I've adapted it slightly for the allotment, "It was a hard, hard plot, with hard, hard soil in a hard, hard year, watered with hard, hard water by a gardener with hard, hard hands and a hard, hard heart" (all true apart from the heart business)

Our woes have been added to with the discovery that our carrots weren't eaten by carrot fly but by wire worm. A neighbouring plot has lost potatoes to the same pest. Apparently they have a three year life cycle so it could be 3 years before we can successfully grow root vegetables.

However, it's not all bleak. Today I harvested the remainder of our broad beans, we've had about 10 kilos in total so I think that can count as a successful crop. The courgettes and rainbow chard are also cropping well at the moment and the pumpkins, borlotti beans and cavolo nero are coming along nicely too. I am a tad concerned that the sweetcorn isn't growing as quickly as I'd like but fingers crossed.

The courgettes are doing so well that I've been able to kick off the 2010 preserving season with my first batch of courgette pickle (below), hopefully there'll be a few more to come. I've got an exhaustive wish list for this year's preserves, more of which anon but suffice to say I've got my eye on the Rowan berries next .......

The Vegetable Headlines today are ......

Rabe Broccoli: Was very nice but isn't really broccoli like at all. Everything is eaten, the leaves, stalks and florets. The bottom 6cm or so of the stalks are really very fiberous so they're best cut off, the leaves wilt right down like spinach (and also has a similar minerally taste) which is a relief on the emergency chomping front as I've not got the mountain of veg I first imagined. The recipe I tried was lovely, highly recommended.

Broad Beans: Having pinched the tops out I decided to keep the pinchings (not sure that's an actual technical term) to cook at home. I arrived back from the allotment with a carrier bag bulging with beans tops, Raab Broccoli and Radishes which I left in the hallway when I came in. About half an hour later I went back to it to find an army of winged creatures teeming out of the bag and making their way determinedly up my walls. I would have screamed and flung the bag outside if I hadn't remembered that not only am I gardener but am northern to boot and therefore made of sterner stuff, so I placed the bag outside in a calm and seemly fashion. Now I just have to come up with a way to use up a carrier bag full of bean tops.

Potatoes: I began to worry about my potatoes at home after seeing several plots at the allotment had flowering potatoes already whereas mine are showing no signs of doing so, yet were planted out much earlier. I rummaged around in the bags and was horrified to discover the soil at the bottom of the bags was bone dry, despite several days of heavy rain here. I didn't realise that the bags seem to be in the rain shadow on the fence. I've obviously given them a good watering so it's now a matter of keeping my fingers crossed and see what happens.

Courgettes: I've got my first courgette flowers! I initially bought 3 courgette plants, planted 1 at home and 2 on the allotment. The one at home has gone from strength to strength in the shelter of our high fences but the allotment courgettes struggled in their exposed position in the cold snap we had (despite cloches). In a panic I planted a few more courgette seeds as I couldn't face a second courgette-less year after the 2009 Mosaic virus incident so I now also have 3 baby courgette seedlings planted out on the plot. Some may call it disorganised - I call it succession planting!

Cat Fight in the Carrots!

Much drama at the Kitchen today, Willow shot into our bedroom at 6am full of a tale of a cat fight she heard in the garden during the night. Apparently our cat lost her collar and there was "blood and everything!" I went out to see if there was any evidence of the nocturnal goings on but all that remained was a flattened patch in the carrots. On closer inspection quite a number of carrot tops had been broken so I pulled them up and got a satisfying crop of 'honeysnack'.

We chose this variety for a couple of reasons. Carrots are really cheap to buy in the shops so growing them ourselves doesn't make sense economically but where it does make sense is in the ability to sample rare or unusual varieties. This variety was described in the seed catalogue as very sweet and particularly suitable for eating raw, as raw carrots are more popular than cooked in our house it seemed a sensible choice. We pulled up one or two carrots as a test a few weeks ago when they were really small but I wasn't very keen on them at that point, they were stringy and had quite a parsnipy taste. Now they're fatter and fully grown they're far nicer.

The broad bean plants were looking very tatty after being attacked by caterpillars, I think the chickens managed a few sneaky pecks through the fence too, they were also wilting and yellowing so I picked off the last of the bean pods and then pulled up the plants. In their place I planted the remaining 'bens' seedlings. This is the first year I've grown broad beans and I've really enjoyed it, they're delicious simply steamed and buttered, I just wish I had more space to grow a larger crop.

Oh yes, we've seen the cat this morning, she seems fine. Evidently the interloper came off worse!