We Are Self-Sufficient!!

Er. Well in garlic definately...

I'm afraid curiosity got the better of me this weekend and I dug up the last of the garlic bulbs - almost all of them were huge and some were fantastic shapes, nothing like what you get in the supermarket which just makes me like them more!

And The Great Question Number One is...

Why does the sun shine when I sit at my desk at work and then the heavens open when I get home and want to weed/plant/dig/harvest potatoes for dinner?

For some reason I'm not being allowed to give this post a title...

Hurray! Look what I found this morning! It seems like everyone else has been eating strawberries for weeks but up here things are slower and we have only had two or three a day. But with a bit of sunshine this weekend everything is speeding up.

My squashes are beautiful and I picked the first Costa Romanique courgette today. Its hard to get a sense of scale from this photo but please believe me that its huge!

I now have some teeny tiny baby cucumbers so this year am going to try removing all the male flowers and see if I can get some bigger fruits. And some of the wild raspberries near my house are turning ripe so it won't be long before the annual jam making and sweating over hot sugar begins again.

By the way - how long does garlic need to dry out? And how do you know when its done?

What is up with the weather?

Complaining about the weather at the moment is getting a bit boring but I can't help it. Are we ever going to see some summer?

My garden was totally waterlogged at the weekend and I couldn't get into the greenhouse because the path is flooded. Although I realise that this is nothing compared to the poor folk further south who have had whole allotments washed away.

I did manage to get to the garden centre though and buy some beautiful plants for the pots in the back garden. And I discovered a beautiful Autumn Bliss raspberry plant which is now sitting very happily at the back door.

In between the downpours I managed a bit of weeding and dug up a garlic plant (thanks for the advice soilman!) which is beautiful and now drying out. I'm going to leave the other 60 or so plants in the ground for a few weeks and see if they get any bigger. Family seemed very impressed and the smell is fantastic.