Some herbaceous stuff e.g. hollyhocks looking very wilted during the day but recovering overnight. I suppose the roots just ca't pump the water fast enough.

I have often been asked why some plants of this family [Cucurbitaceae], including Pumpkins, don't seem to attract many honeybees for pollination. A very experience beekeeper and gardener told me they do attract insects, but often quite early in the morning, so people don't get to see them. The nectar flow seemed to him to be aimed at night-flyers and early-risers like bumblebees. You might keep an eye out if you get up early. Two useful links below re courgettes and pumpkins.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/grand-challenges-food-for-thought/0/steps/52752

https://www.apicultural.co.uk/the-bees-that-pollinate-pumpkins

Roger

I've tried some dwarf runner beans both last year and this and though they were covered in flowers last year there were hardly any beans. The ones I've tried this year seem to be doing the same - flowering but not producing anything. I think I'm going to sow a few normal runners today and give up on the dwarf variety.

Had some of the first radishes with my lunch today. A lot hotter and more peppery than the ones from Tesco!

Salad is doing really well too and we’ve been harvesting for a week or so now. The lack of rain and therefore of slugs is most welcome.

I’m now harvesting cut and come again salad leaves from troughs and we’re getting radishes from our daughter’s garden.  My courgettes have small flower buds but I doubt they’ll be opening for a few days. Probably to coincide with the cooler weather later this week. The flowers are opening on my runner beans but the dwarf french beans are still not doing anything much.

Mint always fascinates me....

My great grandfather lived in Cornwall back in the early 50's and was an avid veg grower, but in addition he had a bed of spearmint. As his health deteriorated he was forced to move to North London to be cared for, and my grandmother decided to bring a couple of clumps of the mint back with her. After my great grandfather eventually passed away, my grandmother moved from North London to Hertfordshire, then to the Essex coast and eventually because my grandfather had died and she was ageing, back to North London. Each time she moved she brought a couple clumps of the same spearmint with her. She also had a bed of mint that faithfully returned to lush vegetation each year.

Since then my grandmother has also passed on and after deciding to downsize my parents moved into my grandmother's property. I took a couple of clumps to my house around 20 years ago, but rather than let it run wild as it does, planted them in pots. Each of my 3 children have their own gardens and have plants taken from our pots, and my mother's bed continues to flourish.

Over 60 years and still going strong.....that wonderful smell of spearmint freshly crushed between the fingers, always makes me feel hungry.

All of this, for me, is a bit like a family tree       

A lovely story. I find it interesting how many plants move properties, sometimes over several generations too.

Mints of course come a wide range of textures, colours and flavours. My favourite this year is a pot of Mentha aquatica. The fragrance is evocative of tramping the river bank. The spearmint in my garden in a pot looks particularly green and is very fragrant. I try to propagate from cuttings each year and chuck the old matted roots after a year or so. 

I actually managed to kill a mint plant a few years ago, somehow!

We then took some pieces of mint from my in-laws garden (no idea how old that plant is) and planted it in a pot sunk in the veg bed. When I replaced the veg beds I then also managed to kill that one, but fortunately enough of the mint had escaped that it now keeps popping up in unexpected places. Whenever I find a new shoot I have replanted it in the pot and it is thriving once more. Had some in a mojito last night while enjoying the last warm evening for a while :)

Mint's ability to regenerate from tiny fragments of root seems to be rivalled only by bindweed. I am forever pulling up bindweed shoots. If you can manage to get them up without breaking them, you sometimes find that the shoots have travelled up through about 2ft of soil from a half-inch piece of buried broken root!

Great news Rob.

No flowers on my cuces yet but a big female flower on a courgette. Hope there's a male open nearby somewhere as there are plenty of bumblebees around. Otherwise, that's a lost fruit.

I’ve got about three or four courgettes set now, after the first three weeks or so when I only had male flowers.

The veg beds are being rather overrun with self-seeded squash plants (and tomatoes). I’m trying to leave some of these free plants where they are in a reasonable location, and have moved some of the self-sown tomato seedlings to an empty flowerbed. 

Had our first mangetout today too (or the kids did anyway, I didn’t get a look in!)

Everything is rather overcrowded but we don’t have a lot of space!

My courgette has responded nicely to the sunshine and rain with about ten flower buds, that are not open yet but swelling nicely, and one looks like a female.  

Runner beans are flowering but not setting yet, perhaps the wet weather has deterred pollinating insects. Tomatoes are setting and my borders are full of self sets as usual.  I have mini chillis and plenty of flowers on three plants in a tub in the front porch.  Cut and come again lettuce in troughs has been cut and has come again but we eat a lot of salad, so I’ve sown an additional trough.  Black currants are ripening and I’ll be making jam before the end of the month!  

This is probably one of the worst years I can remember in our garden and  allotment here in South Essex. With virtually only two significant rainfalls in the last three months it is perpetual watering. The 20mm at the start of the month was welcome but back to desert a couple of days later and now rain free for 5 days. Watering never seems to promote the same strong growth as decent rainfall. The strawberries and raspberries are doing ok though.

I've noticed too that watering is not the same as a decent fall of rain with the higher humidity that comes with it maybe a factor. Good growing weather of course which has been almost absent this year.

That said my strawberries in troughs are the best ever maybe due to all the the sunshine? The rain seems to miss this part of the south coast but I can see some showers inland if I look north. Supposed to rain tomorrow but I see that the overnight rain forecast just yesterday has been watered down again. Very hit and miss this kind of weather.

Sure enough the butternut squashes are just shrivelling and dropping off once they get an inch or two long. Courgettes growing nearby are growing fine, so I don't know why these keeps happening. In three or four years of trying butternuts we have only ever succeeded in getting two fruit to maturity!

One small courgette and another on its way.  Runner beans are setting and we’re a few days from first harvest. Lots of green tomatoes, chilli’s are setting and beetroot is big enough for roasting but I want them a bit bigger to grate raw onto salad and I’m picking the leaves for salads too. I’m harvesting black currants and freezing them to make jam later but it’s a race with the birds and they’re winning. 

The solitary peach has dropped off the tree!  Better luck with that next year maybe!  

Parsley mystery!  Has anyone experienced both curly leaf and flat leaf parsley growing on the same plant?

Some Years ago I planted a pot of parsley that I’d bought as a growing herb from a supermarket.  Every year it self seeds in the border and grows all year round, both flat and curly leaf plants, yet I only planted one kind but I put it down to some seeds not coming true.  However, while tying up the seed heads today I noticed both flat and curly growing on the same plants! 

Funny you mention that but a plant from last year in a pot I trimmed back a month ago has a flowering stalk and some flat leaves with it but most is still curly. It gets quite snobby with parsley as keen cooks sometimes swear by the flat Italian/French plant saying it has better flavour than the 'English' common or garden stuff. English cuisine being the poor relation of continental stuff? In cooking I'm not too bothered but make a point in using chopped stalks as well in stews etc. A part so often wasted. I think it depends more on soil and growing conditions?

Tomatoes in baskets setting well with masses of little fruits appearing, strawberries in troughs very productive this year and now cut back and put out of sight, beans looking good though the gales are of course unwelcome this time of year.  Agapanthus looking spectacular front and back with the deep blue flowers adding a hint of the Med to garden. And the 'Bishop of Llandaff is about to begin its long lasting and hopefully stunning summer performance as long as I deadhead on a regular basis. But these incessant gales - why can't they wait until October?

Been picking black currants from my brother-in-laws garden today.  His bushes are laden but he has a very big garden and he keeps bees, so I expect they’re well pollinated!  I now think I might be short of jam jars. I’d still be there picking them if he hadn’t offered to show hubby the slow worm in his compost heap, which was right next to me!  I just don’t do slithery things!  

First wineberries (Japanese raspberries) today - about a week earlier than usual.

We shan't have the usual visit from great-nieces and -nephews to stuff themselves on the crop, though.