A Squash Called Olive

I nearly pulled off another efficient visit to the Hill today, but ended up gassing to cheery Brian & Pauline all about quilting & their other love of geneology just before I came home, so it doesn't quite count.

No matter - I went to the Hill with the aim of taking down some more PEAS (hsl gladstone & newick) & dismantling the frame. This I did, then transplanted four CABBAGES (kilaton) to the other end of the bed, which meant that I could shorten this bed - another step towards the goal of creating beds at that side of the plot for permanent crops.

Potager Chrissie came by, collecting barrowloads of manure from the skip for some of her cleared areas, and admired the SQUASH (olive) - one fruit of which is getting too heavy to lift and is a couple of foot in length.

Frankly, I have no idea what I will do with this. In fact, this squash is becoming rather a celebrity as retired Maureen, John Badger at the bottom & returning allotmenteer Christine & husband Mike all joined Chrissie on the path to admire it with me.

"What's this meeting?", asked Reg-next-plot, as he came up too - eventually the assembled dispersed I chatted with Reg about the club, and the tallest sunflower comptetion (there's one sunflower at about 12' apparently - mines about 9' at a guess) & this & that, & he gave me a perfect cylindrical beetroot ("it's the same girth all the way down - great for pickling as it all fits in the jar!").

I turned to beds b1 & b2 where the potatoes were, gave them a quick rake over then sowed rows of green manure 6" apart - the germination was pretty poor with this seed last year, so I laid it on fairly thickly.

Then I wielded the fork and grubbed up another of the gooseberry bushes - I noticed that neighbour Ted appears to have had the same sort of thoughts as me with regard to gooseberries (his and mine being back-to-back at plot borders) & it looks like he's replaced his bushes with a thornless variety & I must investigate this further. I have no quarrel with gooseberries, but they seem to have an exceedingly spikey quarrel with me!

I then picked a couple of potions of RUNNER BEANS (reg next plot & essex bb) & the ever faithful FRENCH BEAN (barlotti jody).

I went up for a chat with the Saturday Old Boys in the clubhouse where we had a discussion about the blight resistant tomatoes that Bill is growing. The usefulness of this conversation was tempered somewhat as Bill could not recall names of the varietes in question, & he's not actually tasted any of the three varieties grown yet - however they haven't sucumbed to blight, so that's something.

And then a very entertaining chat with cheery Brian & Pauline & came home to google 'what to do with giant squash'...