A combination of being away and being really sick has kept me away from the plot. But on Sunday, Ma was back from her holiday, I was feeling better, and the weather was slightly cooler. It was time to go and see what two weeks of neglect had done to the plot.It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. There was weeding and harvesting to do. The only thing that really hadn’t survived was the cucumbers. I sowed some more seeds, but if they don’t take, we’ll just plant something else there! At the courgette end, we now have six courgette plants (three striped and three yellow) and two crookneck plants. They are all looking ok and about to start producing, the yellow courgette have worryingly yellow leaves but are otherwise ok.

The uchiki kuri in the box obviously love their sheltered position and have gone mad and there is even a tiny squash ready to be fertilized, the other squash are growing but slowly.

The tomatoes are all still alive, but not flowering yet, we also have some voluntary nasturtiums next to one of the tomato beds. In fact I’m loving the amount of self seeded plants that are popping up in unlikely places. Aramanth, borage, coriander, rocket, the california poppies that didn’t ever seem to go away this year, there are also a couple of lemon balm and oregano seedings growing up at the edge of the plot near the courgettes. Next year I hope that we’ll add calendula to the mix too. We need to plant out the basil in those beds next week.The summer raspberries probably had their time last week, and the autumn ones had a flush too but are also growing canes so I’ll expect them again in the next few months. The blueberries are all still alive and some are coming ripe. Five this week. This week’s soft fruit stars are the gooseberries, we picked nearly three kilos and there is more to come. They are eating gooseberries and so good, assuming I don’t eat them all straight from the bowl, I’m planning on at least one pot of jam and maybe some compote, some of them have already joined the raspberries in a granita.The peas are all picked (nearly a kilo of them once Ma had podded them) and that bed is clear for a second sowing of beetroot, because we love beetroot. We picked 10 from the beetroot bed for eating and we’ll also use the greens as we would chard, which will keep us in greens until the chard starts again (we’ll sow that next week). The carrot bed is doing really well too, it’s the first year that I feel we done well with carrots, the ones in the enviromesh cloche have really done well, I think that they must be slightly warmer under it. That also gave us our first batch of pesto for the year, 8 pots and 2 jars.The salad is doing well (I cannot say the same of the spinach!) and on the carrot and the salad bed, the row of sweet peas were looking lovely. We seem to have more ladybirds on the plot (I brought one home on my face!) and that so far seems to have seen off the greenfly. The other bed of sweet peas is also blooming and the celery in that bed seems to be doing well too. The french beans are still little but alive so I’m calling that good.The potatoes had suffered a bit with the heat and me not being great at toping them up, so we decided to harvest four of them, we had loads (6 lbs) and the compost when straight into the empty bed near the shed, which will be full in a couple of weeks, when we harvest the remaining three bags.The three sisters bed has sweetcorn and squash plants but there are a couple of gaps (foxes!) so we’ll see how it goes, in a couple of weeks, I’ll sow the borlotti beans and we’ll just hope for the best.  There was a lot of weeding and feeding to do but I’m really loving the flowers (the day lily and carnations are both out, as well as the verbena and lavender) and the allotment looking productive again. We have six beds currently empty but have plans to fill them with leeks, fruit, chard, kale, beetroot, fennel and pak choi.We have lots of weeding, sowing, picking, trimming and work to do next week but I’m feeling much happier about it. Amazing what a bit of sun will do!