Courgettes...

This is the first one of the year and it weighed in at 364g. We had it with our stir-fry evening meal although most of the other ingredients were shop-bought. Although we've had some wet summers recently I still don't think conditions are quite right for growing rice in Cumbria!

Now, the trouble with courgettes is that once they start producing they just keep going so you have to come up with increasingly innovative ways to use up the darn things. I have three plants this year and already there are six fruit approaching picking stage. Can I ask the dear readers of this blog how they deal with all their courgettes. 

I try to stagger all my sowing/planting in order to ensure continuity of supply through the season and avoid gluts but this year is going to be a bit of a challenge (aren't they all!). Because of the slow start I'm finding that a lot of things just hung around and sulked till about mid May then took off like rockets with the end result that I have a lot of stuff all ready at the same time. I suppose creative cooking might be the answer but I don't really do that sort of thing. Soup...that's the answer. I'm going to invent some new soups so watch this space.

I think I posted on one of the veg growing forums that, because of the amount of disease last year, we should all be keeping an eye on our crops this year as some of it would be carried over on infected plant material. So far I've lost seven potato plants to blackleg, all with seed from a respected Scottish supplier. This to me is an unacceptable level of contamination for what is supposed to be certified seed. Even more annoying is that they were Lady Christl, may favourite new potato.

But we are managing to eat some. I lifted these yesterday

so all is not lost and if the weather stays kind to us we might just get a decent harvest this year.