After last night’s plot watering I had a quick peek in the greenhouse to see if any tomatoes were ripe and saw chaos. The strings holding one of the cross-poles had snapped and vines were slumped everywhere. No breakages thankfully and they are back to being vertical, but it was very fiddly. It’s still rammed – I can get in there, but it means sidling in s-l-o-w-l-y and sideways. I did get a Katja tomato for my dinner, it was the size of my hand and delicious with mozzarella and basil. I’ve previously not had much success with beefsteak tomatoes, the greenhouse does make all the difference!

The kiwanos are growing nicely and are starting to look like they are meant to. The spikes are ridiculously sharp so any harvesting will be cautious! My hidden kohlrabi are still doing well and haven’t been found by any pigeons and hardly any butterflies. Might try that again next year – it’s nice to have less netting about the place.

I now have Sandpoint tomato seeds drying at home for next year. They are lovely, ultra-early salad toms, all ripen at the same time and then internet wisdom says they will flower again and set a second crop – though I might just pull it out to make more space for the others. I treated them as a cordon, but apparently they are dwarf bush toms, which explains a lot!

I do need to sort out what I can isolate for seed saving. The squashes aren’t really doing what I thought they would and the melons just look ill. Chillies seem to be ok so far though. The Royal Black has grown into a lovely looking plant, just small because it’s in a pot and also outside.

I’ve sown some more beetroot, a trug of Autumn King carrots, and need to sort out sowings for winter – some fennel, more kohlrabi and some pak choi & spinach. PSB, remaining kale and sprouts now in the ground and securely netted.