"someone" wrote in message
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I'm green with envy! It's a rare year here in UK when we have any outdoor
tomatoes worth talking about,

Our outdoor ones (inner city Leeds, Yorkshire) are usually as abundant and
tastier than the greenhouse ones. This year they're scraggy little things,
as are those of a neighbour. My greenhouse ones aren't as abundant as usual
and none was ripe until we got home from Scotland on Thursday. I was
watering them at midnight because, it seems, there's been no rain and my
soaker hose was dry, the butt empty. They're recovering now so I'm
reasonably happy. Cucumbers in the greenhouse haven't done well, few, small
and with tough skins.

My greatest relief is that there's no blight in toms or potatoes, I've never
had it but I'm not being smug or over-confident, just grateful. To date.

Our potatoes aren't doing too bad, but some are very small because of the
wet early summer.

Same here.

The Nicola variety has produced a reasonable crop on the allotment.

I haven't lifted the outdoor ones yet, I suppose I'll have to do it soon.
What a busy time of year this is, this morning I've cut out all the old
raspberry canes, they haven't produced as much fruit as last year either.

The early sweetcorn was a washout, but we sure have had a bumper crop of
peas, for a couple of months now,

Never tried sweetcorn and I can't grow good peas :-(

and all the leafy veg like chard, endive, and cavolo nero are doing well.

Yes, they always do here. Pity, though, that Spouse isn't keen on them. I
love chard - for its flavour and appearance - so grow it despite his
protestations :-)

The runners weren't picked for the week we were away (a son promised he
would, as well as water the greenhouse grrrr) so we had a huge meal of them
last night and there will be the same tonight. In a way I'm not sorry to
find over-large and swollen ones, I pick out the beans and discard the
shells. The beans are very tasty.

No idea when I can lift salsify because it's never grown well before but I'm
looking forward to it :-)

And next year I'll be able to harvest asparagus, dv :-)

Mary