First beet

Add water

A beautiful month, after a rainy start, with enough sunshine to allow things to bloom and ripen. Everything's needed watering, especially sweetcorn, beans, courgettes and some newly established raspberry bushes. Lots of early windfall apples and overripe plums about and with them, fruit flies and wasps.

Drawn swords

Heads up

Late risers flourish

Despite being slow to start these off, the sweetcorn's done well in the hot weather, bolstered by almost daily watering and with any luck, there'll be a couple of dozen cobs along in a few weeks. Probably best to take the precaution of fencing these off with netting to discourage the local badger population from taking a sweet snack.

Pomme de Terre

After a cold spring and periods of drought and humidity, it hasn't been a great year for potatoes, but a crop of Desiree have done ok.

Rudbeckia fulgida

        Rudbeckia and chamomile loving the hot dry spell this week.

Survivors

The entire tomato crop at the allotment succumbed to blight, the perfectly formed fruits turning from green to black. It might have been because the weather was wet and warm for a while, but it's more likely that there are spores in the soil from previous years. Fortunately, the crop grown at home in pots has done well.

Pair of sunnies

Conemelt

Echinacea, like Rudbeckia, are cone flowers. John Peel used to play a lot of Conemelt in the 90s.

Beeteasel

Beans present & future

Harvested the first of the French beans and planted out some new seedlings for a late harvest.

Cuppa cha

A good year for chamomile and enough to harvest for tea, before the rains return next month.

Rack 'em up

Ideally, the onion harvest should last into the winter, but this year's crop isn't large enough and unless they're stored well they can rot. Enough for the next few weeks though and a lot more flavour than those in the shops.

Some Like It Hot

Raised from seed 18 months ago, these carnations are now blooming well and smell deliciously of honey and cloves. (Dianthus caryophyllus 'Giant Chabaud')

Home Spice

                                        Hot Cayenne

Frozen assets

That's the broad bean harvest over for the year, with about 5kg in the freezer for later. A good source of protein; one of the best crops to grow. A shame that the earlier blackfly infestation reduced the harvest by around 20%.

Hydra

A multi-headed sunflower in the garden that made it to maturity, out of the dozens that didn't.

Tray Safe

Kale and lettuce seedlings, safely sprouting in trays away from slimy beasties, though in hot weather the compost can dry out alarmingly quickly.

Autumn Early

If these are the new 'Autumn Gold' raspberries, planted back in March, then autumn has come early.

Lettuce Pray

Few lettuce sown directly to the soil have got this large this year because of all the mollusc activity, but hopefully some of these will make it through.

40% net

A good harvest of broad beans, despite the aphid angst last month. The plants possibly suffered more from rust, which happens when they're not well ventilated - grown too close together - and it's a bit damp. A kilo of pods yields about 400 grams of beans.

Dearth

There's a peculiar lack of strawberries this year. The plants were healthy in Spring, flowered and were well watered and fed with potash. There seemed to be a good amount of berries forming. It's possible that birds have taken them, though they haven't before, even small, or large two-legged mammals. Odd. Perhaps there was a greater proportion of older plants to newly generated ones, maybe rain and wind at a crucial time prevented pollination, like on the Cox's apple tree this year ... but gardener's aren't supposed to mention the disasters, just focus on the positives.

Glut

Loads of courgettes around this year; they're very thirsty, hungry plants and benefit from a daily water and as much compost as possible.

Slim Shady

Celery's quite happy growing in the shade, but although the leaves and thinned plants are good for salads and stews, the stems won't be ready to harvest until November.

Lily Bloom

A welcome end to the June rainy season and some sunshine to bring out the first lilies, which, if the forecast is correct, won't get spoiled by a prolonged downpour any time soon.

Unclassified

Can't identify this perennial weed, which grows a couple of metres tall. It appears to be a cross between a dandelion and a thistle. Even a trawl through this great site didn't help :
http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/

Not so easy peasy

Harvested a kilo of early peas, though by the time they're shelled, that'll be about half a kilo. They're worth it, even though they're labour intensive and predated by mice, birds and molluscs. 

Jammy dodgers

They take an age to pick - not possible to harvest in a hurry, or you'll drop them, or worse, spill the container. Plucked a kilo today, probably for jam, with some juice left over for something healthy and / or alcoholic.

Papaver

Spike

Regular as clockwork, at the end of June, this indoor cactus flowers on a hastily assembled spike.

A bag of geese

Not that there's much time between the rain showers at the moment, but there are several kilos of gooseberries ready to be picked and frozen, stewed or turned into jam. Just mind the thorns and prune back the bush if you have time and thick gloves.

A Hoya Again

This indoor hoya vine now produces about thirty of these nectar-dripping flowers every summer, filling the room with a sweet aroma which used to attract large moths when the back door was open, but the weather's been so wet there are few around this year.

Pods

Eating courgettes every day at the moment, though not yet in cakes. The first broad beans are still small, but tender. At this time of year the pods are edible too.

Block of sweets

Some of the sweetcorn's looking a bit ragged after being chomped by snails and slugs but otherwise it's growing well, enjoying all the recent rain and humidity.

First Berries

          The first gooseberries and strawberries of the season.

For the pot

The first pea pods are filling out and the courgette plants have started producing.

Holey Beans

Most of the broad bean plants are forming pods, despite an annual attack of weevils, munching holes in the leaves and aphids, which ants farm for their own larder. There simply aren't enough ladybirds and other predators around to control all the pests and some plants have become completely infested and needed pulling up.

Hunbergia Alata

Managed to get some black-eyed susan vines to grow indoors. The seeds germinated in the airing cupboard a few months ago and now they're happily climbing up a support just inside the back door.

Iris Verbascum

           A hot dry spell, allowing iris and verbascum to bloom.

Phaseolus Vulgaris

French beans are underway, supported by last year's raspberry canes. Slugs and snails have been a problem with many plants, but so far they haven't found these.

Dubious Amphibious

Not sure if this fella's a toad or a frog. Unhelpfully, it wouldn't turn to face the camera and was probably feeling a bit stressed by the unwanted attention of one of the neighbourhood cats.

Early Greek

Harvested some garlic early, as sometimes it can develop white rot in damp conditions but this, from a bulb brought back from Greece, despite being a bit small, is fine. It'll benefit from a few days drying in the sun, although with rain around, that's best done under glass if possible.

Onion angst

They might look great, but perhaps they're all top and no bottom, as the actress didn't say to Cardinal Wolsey. The tops are great, chopped up in salads, but there are signs that some of them are bolting - running to seed - before the base swells properly, even though they've been watered and the soil's been pampered with wood ash and potash.

Late Sweet

A little late with getting the sweetcorn underway this year, but both the shop bought and saved seed have germinated well inside on window ledges now that it's warmed up a bit.

Last Lion

The last, almost, dandelion of the season, which my neighbour has been cultivating magnificently.