Lack Lustre Courgettes

This year I have grown a new variety of courgette, a climbing courgette called Black Forest. I choose this variety, as you can grow them in pots up a wigwam of canes, to save space in my vegetable bed.

I am trying to cast my mind back to last summer when I had a lovely harvest of courgettes and I am wondering am I showing them an injustice by calling them slow, weedy and pathetic. Have I jumped the gun as it's a bit too early for them to shine or do they indeed deserve my name calling.

I had a little ferret around a bulb of garlic this week, as the tops are turning brown and I am happy to report that I think in a week or two, they will be ready for harvesting.

I am so excited as I have tried to grow garlic a couple of times before without much success and I nearly gave up but we use garlic all the time in cooking and I didn't want to be beaten by this bulb, so I think it will be third time lucky this year.

I have been giving all my vegetables a good dousing of seaweed extract. I know this is going to be a bit of a daft thing to say but when I watered my tomatoes in the greenhouse with the seaweed extract, it really did smell of the seaside. I imagined that the smell would have gone after extracting the minerals, so I was quite surprised and was taken right back to rock pooling as a child in Cornwall when I watered.

I can't say the smell was all that pleasant but the memories certainly were!

On a tragic note for vegetable growers and the environment, I would like to bring to your attention, an article I read in George Monbiot's blog for the Guardian.

www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/jul/15/vegetables-disease-aminopyralid-pesticide It seems that the pesticide aminopyralid has reared it's ugly head again and is affecting small producers and amateur gardeners.

If your vegetables have been poisoned by the chemical, they will show signs of distortion and you may have been left wondering what was wrong with your plants.

This is such an interesting article and well worth a read. I certainly had my eyes opened to this problem.

I don't use any chemicals on my garden. I would like to say, if I see a weed I pull it up by hand and I do in my vegetable garden and gravel garden but the rest is just an urban wilderness.

I have been down amongst the dandelion heads, which really are a thing of beauty.

I even think the clover and buttercups are a bit special too.

I really like this relaxed way of gardening and at the moment I seem to have time for little else.

But do they say. 'A weed is only a plant in the wrong place" and I couldn't agree more!

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