Saturday 13 August 2011

The Vegetable Garden grows flowers too!









Vegetables are now coming thick and fast. Nothing is early at our height, and when everybody else is finishing reaping their crops we are just beginning. Thus we had our first real helping of broad beans today - they were delicious. I also froze the first lot too. The leeks are looking very healthy and growing fast. I shall soon be able to make my favourite leek recipe (leeks wrapped in slices of ham and baked in cheese sauce). We are picking courgettes daily and I am running out of exciting ways to cook them! And runner beans are red over with flowers. Time will tell how many of them set and become long beans.

But there is more to our vegetable garden than vegetables. For a start there are sunflowers here and there - some of them taller than the farmer. We can't bear to pull them up because the birds so love the seeds, so we leave them there until the winter.

Sweet peas need picking every day and I have jugs full in every room. Lilies which were thrown out years ago onto the compost heap insist on coming up each year and making the garden smell heavenly (especially the white ones). And hollyhocks make a fine show in the hedge each year, although nobody has told them that they are supposed to be straight and tall. A line of marigolds (calendula) stretches across the garden and provides me with plenty of cut flowers too. I do love their cheerful, sunny faces.

On the farming front, the farmer has taken delivery today of a load of stakes and rails for fencing jobs and two new gates to put across the bottom of the yard. About time too as the ones that are there now are so heavy that if there is the slightest breeze I cannot manage to hold them, so can't go down to see my chicks.

Speaking of which, I poked the camera through the wire just now and took this shot. Haven't they grown? Mother is still as protective as ever.

13 comments:

Elizabeth said...

Very lush and August-y
like the calendulas especially.
We are up at our son's getting nature in spades....deer, raccoons, skunks, rabbits, chipmunks, mosquitos etc
Serious gardening about to begin tomorrow.

Pondside said...

We're watering madly, as it is dry as a bone and our veggies are not yet ready for harvest. We've had some radishes and lots of lettuce, but no beans yet.

Heather said...

Such a lovely post Pat. The chicks are growing up fast and your flowers are beautiful. My mouth is watering at the sight of your rows of gorgeous veggies - leeks wrapped in ham with cheese sauce - yum! I often think a well tended veg plot can be as attractive as a flower bed.

angryparsnip said...

Hollyhocks are a favorite of mine. I am trying to think of where I can plants some next spring.

Leeks wrapped in ham with cheese sauce sounds so good. Must look up a recipe for that.

Beautiful photos and the chicks are getting very big.

cheers, parsnip

Rarelesserspotted said...

Great pictures to accompany your update. I guess the older gardeners will have used a mixture of flowers among their veg that would have repelled certain types of pest that attack veg?
X

John "By Stargoose And Hanglands" said...

My broad beans have been eaten and forgotten about, mind you there were so few of them that it didn't take long! Runners are looking fine and had the first taste of them today. Everything seems to be picking up now the weather is back to something near normal. Good luck with the rest of your veg.

Penny said...

Interesting Pat I love leeks done that way too, always a favorite in our house, and yes, the visitors decided to stay in town, so I will now freeze the casserole! John caught fish so we had that instead.

Mrs Catch said...

Oh what a glorious garden! We're in the thick of Winter here. Not much happening. So it's nice to enjoy it on your blog.

Dave King said...

Sunflowers in the garden are anew experience for us. We were given some seeds by a neighbour's small boy who bought them at his school fete. Animals and high winds have accounted for some and we are now down to two. Both of which have over-sailed the conservatory and can only be viewed from a bedroom window!

The Weaver of Grass said...

Thank you for the comments. First plums this morning too - and the weather is improving - so can't be bad.

Kalyan Panja said...

Simply beautifully captured shots...lovely!

Bovey Belle said...

My veg plot has been a real disappointment this year - a hot dry spring and lots of cool nights haven' encouraged good growth and I have only had my first picking of runners today, and ONE courgette so far! Ah well, the gooseberries were good and the spuds are apparently the tastiest boiled spuds OH has ever eaten . . .

Unknown said...

How you still have time to grow flowers with all the work you have to do for the farm is a complete mystery to me!! I guess you must love them a lot:)