The Seaweed Crop

Long-distance readers of The Diary will recall our efforts back in January to use seaweed, the traditional fertilizer of Highland coastal communities, to prepare our vegetable garden for this year's crops (post here); and those with even more marathon memories will recall that we attempted some novel methods of moving it up from the beach below the house (post here).  For people like us, who are complete amateurs at vegetable gardening, the result has been a bumper crop, though it may be as much to do with the unusually fine summer we've enjoyed as the seaweed.

Our peas had a very slow start because of the cold weather at the beginning of May but, once they got going, they excelled themselves.  As well as being deliciously sweet, the record so far is eleven peas in a single pod.

Courgettes, dwarf and broad beans, spinach, cauliflower, mixed salad leaves, a greenhouse full of tomatoes, and a porch which is home to sweet peppers have made us self-sufficient in vegetables through the summer, and we have calabrese, leaks, onions and carrots to keep us on into the winter.

The most spectacular results have come from our soft fruit - and here there is no doubt that the warm, dry summer helped.  The strawberries have been magnificent, producing steadily throughout the season - and, amazingly, some are still ripening; and we've had blackcurrants and gooseberries

But top prize goes to our raspberries.  We never thought that this soft fruit would be such a winner in the West Highland climate, but the pleasure we have had from them defies description - and they've yet to reached their main cropping.

So now it's raspberries for breakfast, raspberries for lunch, raspberries for tea, and guess what's for dinner - all of which explains the faint red stain on The Diary's beard.