Globe artichokes, anyone?

Today was warm with a few clouds. The odd small grey one threatening but no rain. Tomorrow will be a different story with rain coming in after 1100ish.

This morning, I weeded around the sweetcorn in Bed 9. One of the nearby squash plants is using the wire surrounding the sweetcorn to climb on:



The sweetcorn are looking good and stocky but I hope they get taller soon. Courgette production is starting to speed up now - see the 'One Ball' below:



I then moved onto the peas in Bed 6. I removed the orange netting stuff and weeded around them. I picked my first little lot of pods. I really should have removed the netting before the plants got attached to it. Some of them found it hard to let go and had to be wound around the canes again.

I nipped home for lunch with a sizeable harvest (the swede was given to me by a lovely fellow plotter):



After lunch, I nipped back to plant up a couple of small sweet potato plants that one of my colleagues gave me. Lots of other colleagues asked what they were when they were sitting on my desk yesterday. They are small and perhaps a bit late going out but fingers crossed they settle in and grow. See below for a piccie of one of them:



I also took some other photos of the tomatoes that are growing nicely, the runner beans that are starting to grow and a chard plant that is facing some healthy competition from a Florence Fennel plant.









So what did I fancy for tea with all this grub? I made my first risotto. It contained onion. broad beans, peas and courgette from the plot. It looked like a risotto and it tasted ok too. It was incredibly filling.



So, tomorrow, when it is too wet and windy to venture onto the plot, I can spend some time cooking up the artichokes. I don't want to speak too soon but the globe artichokes are definitely in the running for the biggest success of 2009 on Plot 35. Still time for more though...