In two weeks from now I will not be sitting down wracking my brain about what subject matter to write about in a blog that not very many people read anyway. No, on that Sunday evening 14 days from now I hope to be walking on the cliff path, or sitting down with a glass of something nice in my hand, or playing highly competitive boules on the beach. Because, all being well, we will be on the Roseland Peninsula in Cornwall for a well earned week of rest and relaxation, staying in a pretty stone converted barn. It is a later break than usual this year, we normally go at the end of June or the beginning of July, but earlier in the summer is quite a difficult time for me to be away with everything so young and vibrant, and in the height of the planting season, whereas going at this time is not so critical because most of the summer greenhouse/polytunnel crops will be on their last legs, so there is less at stake, particularly this year when everything is so parched and exhausted.

Deliveries will be as normal in the week leading up to the holiday, because this year our cottage has a Saturday changeover day, so Thursday and Friday deliveries will be as they always are. However, there will be no collections from the farmers’ market on Saturday 30th, or on September 6th when we will be travelling back. There is also a question mark over Saturday 13th, because my grandson is getting married, so I’m trying to work out if I can go to Wyken just for an hour or so to drop off orders. More on that next week once I have made a decision.

I’ve got a mole! it turned up a week ago or so, and has decided to site itself between the greenhouse and the polytunnel. Every morning a molehill has appeared, with that beautiful friable soil neatly piled up. I have been taking a shovel to it and have been applying it to plants that I have growing in pots lined up in front of the greenhouse – a loquat, an olive, an orange, two lemon trees, some agapanthus, and scented geraniums. I had already taken the soil once from the hill today, but in no time the heap started to appear again, and at the time that I took the photo below the soil was actually moving as moley added to the pile.

We are going fruit crazy this week. Hopefully the avocados will arrive, then there are the tatty looking (but perfectly good) Verdelli lemons, cooking apples, Discovery eating apples, plus damsons and Victoria plums. I was hoping to take some plums to the market yesterday, but they were not quite ready on Friday, but will be for next week. So I am going to be spending a fair bit of time up a ladder in the days ahead.

Tomatoes and cucumbers continue to slow down, but there are still enough for everyone (I hope). The summer squash is still yielding remarkably well given how dry it still is, so there are courgettes, patty pan, spaghetti squash and marrows. Lettuces are red oakleaf, but they are not going to be all that big. There will be curly kale, and I am going to cut chard this week. As well as the nice Accord ‘new’ potatoes there will be red Java potatoes, which are a versatile variety suited to more than just boiling. There will be flat leaf as well as curly leaved parsley available in bunches in the coming week.

The extremely dry weather is still presenting big problems. Last Wednesday I planted a couple of hundred cabbages and watered them in well, but when I pulled back the protective netting today to check on them they looked extremely sad, with many of them distinctly crispy around the edges. I gave them another good soaking and hope that will be enough to revive them. The sprinkler is going have to be running again this week in an effort to keep the most important crops hydrated. The most recent casualty is the sweetcorn. I just don’t think that it is going to come to anything, so it can be added to the long list of failures this year. I have managed to keep the celeriac looking healthy, so I am hopeful that I can coax it into making some decent sized heads.

I forgot to mention in the past couple of blogs that the Canada geese all disappeared about three weeks ago. There had been dozens of them since early spring, with several breeding pairs, one of which successfully reared nine goslings. They are very large birds, and vocal with it, so all of a sudden it became very quiet up around the moat and the ponds where they spent most of their time. They come back every year, so whilst they make a mess I really enjoy their bolshie presence and look forward to welcoming them back.

Okay that’s me done. See you soon.

Phil