Broad bean soup...

..was enjoyed by us for tea tonight and nearly all the ingredients were home grown, yey! I got a recipe out of Andi Clevely's "From Welly to Belly' and adapted it a bit to fit what we had. So the home grown element was Onions (had to use 4 of my teeny onions to get a decent amount though), garlic, and loads of beans. We also put in a couple of potatoes to thicken it up a bit (could have used our own but still had a few from the organic stall on the market left) and a swirl of yoghurt. Very tasty. A handy tip from the recipe was to put in two (cleaned) bean pods for extra flavour (but remove before whizzing). it also suggested sieving the soup before serving but that was too faffy for me, so it had bits 'n all.

We've been very busy on the plot, making the most of the nice evenings (bit too hot recently during the day at the weekends) . JB has been doing a grand job of keeping the paths cut and weeding where needed.

I've taken up all the garlic as it had rust and a bit of leek moth damage and I wanted to use the space for a squash. The garlic has done better than I thought. The large cloves planted in the autumn had bulbed up nicely and the smaller ones planted in late winter (bought from the organic veg stall on the market) had grown into one giant clove each. They're all drying out in the lean-to and I'll probably save the giant cloves to plant again next year, which should then bulb up properly (this method produced the best bulbs for me this year).

We've also started to eat the very delicious peas. Mmmm so sweet. Best eaten straight off the plant. Just pop 'em in your mouth. The ones on the back garden are all swelling up first followed by some on the allotment (the ones at home seem to do better though, not sure why but could be that they don't get nibbled by the pea and bean weevil at home), Have got another two lots at different stages of growth (some only just germinated in loo rolls) to try and have a longer supply than the usual 'Yey peas!...aw now they're gone'.

The strawberry plants which survived the winter (probably only about half in total) have been producing VERY tasty berries. A really intense flavour, probably because I don't really water them that much so the flavour doesn't get diluted. Also in the garden have a few wild strawberry plants spreading themselves around, which produce small, but incredibly flavoured fruits.

Red currants are nearly all ripe. Will have to start harvesting soon, though I remember last year they kept pretty well on the bush for quite a while. The black currants are just starting to ripen, as are the raspberries. Excitingly we have one apple growing on our 'new' tree (the tree we've had for over a year but only managed to plant out this winter). I've let it keep the one apple on, as it had a good root system so hopefully it won't be too much of a strain on the tree in this first proper year (You're meant to remove all fruit in the first year to help it establish). However, the tree down the other end, planted two winters ago hasn't got any fruit on - I think it's too far away from the other tree for pollination, so we'll need we need to get another apple tree between the two, to act as a stepping stone for the insects.

A lot more going on, but will save that for another time....and will take the camera to the plot too. A picture says a thousand words, as they say, and my typing seems to be getting worse so anything to help is great!