Bloomin' 'Eck! It's Fost o' July

First of July was a glorious morning in Greater London and I got to spend a little time in both Allotment (well raised bed!) and my garden. Here's a few pics of what's popping up.

First stop, the raised bed . Popped another couple of courgettes in this morning and found a lot of seedlings making an appearance - Beetroot and Kale doing well but not a single spring onion germinated.

Here's one of courgette's I just planted. They've been raised from seed in the windowsill (unlike my others at home which were mostly from ready grown plants from the local greengrocer) Shouldn't be too long before they flower I suspect.

Back at home, here's my block of corn, all 12 plants doing well. To the right, you can just make out the yellow flower of my first courgette of the year, companion planted with the corn. There are about 5 courgette plants spaced throughout, some doing better than others.

Runner Beans are doing very well, two varieties, Moonlight and Prizewinner Stringless, with lovely yellow and red flowers covering the plant. First couple of beans has started appearing so shouldn't be long before I can start harvesting.

A couple of weeks ago I saw a video on vertical training of cucumbers and squash so I constructed a couple of circular fences, buried in the ground, from some wire my neighbour was going to throw away. The cucumbers I climbing voraciously and I popped another three Butternut Squash to get best use out of it.

Tomatoes are doing well as ever, lots of little fruit appearing. I found a tip online for drying out banana skins and grinding them to a powder to use as fertiliser, so have given that a go (mixed with some crushed eggshells) and added it to all my tomato plants today.

And finally, my daughter's first Sunflower of the year has opened. It's a good 5' tall, so not as big as last year but they're growing in very poor soil alongside the fence.