Despite the nice weather the allotment was pretty quiet and those two factors brought a constant companion to us today.  The table we rescued from the bins is proving to be a bit of a sun trap – and at our allotment where there is sun, a place to lie and a few cat treats you will probably find Tammy.   She’s a soppy little thing.

Tammy wasn’t the only creature on the plot today, we saw plenty of bees on our dahlias, a few ladybirds and about a million snails climbing up the bean frame.  We are not supposed to like snails at the alloment and the bigger ones regularly get launched over the fench into the rough ground at the side of our plot, but when they look like this little fella, it’s sort of hard not to.

Again we didn’t have that much to do today.  We fed the plants in the greenhouse,  did some weeding and then harvested some more produce.  Today we have taken home runner beans, tomatoes, courgettes (which Pilla is currently cooking up into a courgette casserole) salad leaves, mint, potatoes, cucumbers and sugar snap peas.

The beetroot is almost ready and our chillis are finally growing.  I put the pictures of these together because I was talking to Ralph on Saturday, and not only did he give me a big bag full of tomatoes (thanks Ralph!), but he talked about a chilli and beetroot pickle he made last year.  Pickles, beetroot and chillis – surely you can’t go wrong with that combination!  We are going to have to make that this year.

Back in the greenhouse we got out first full truss of tomatoes – I think the variety is ‘Gardeners Delight’.  The aubergines are growing at a fair pace and the sweet peppers have almost exploded.  We have four plants and there must be 10-15 peppers on each.

Thought I’d also share the success of the growing frame (it’s known as a munty frame – I got the design from a web forum) as it is now producing tons of very straight runner beans and they are easy to pick too because they all hang down beneath the frame.  Brilliant.  The garlic we picked last week has dried out nicely in the greenhouse, and I think we can start digging up the rest of the garlic next week.