Gooseberry sawfly

I was horrified when I went into the garden yesterday to find my gooseberry bush looked just like a skeleton! I had heard gooseberrry sawfly were voracious, but there had been no evidence of nibbling before the weekend, and being a bit preoocupied with Dan's 18th party, I hadn't checked up again. There weren't any gooseberries anyway, it's a young bush, but I doubt I'll get any next year either now!

On a more positive note, the blueberries are showing colour, the mix of blue, blue/green and green berries look very pretty. I think it will be a while before we pick them though. The cherries are showing red, again a bit longer needed, as they should be black ones, but we have had a couple of raspberries each. Not a lot, I grant, but perhaps next year! This grow your own does take a bit of patience, especially with fruit. The lone plum is still with us, and the blackcurrants are pretty much....black, so I'll try one of those soon, and pick if they are ripe enough. Amazingly, I realised we even have a couple of nuts on the cobnut bushes, that's so exciting.

As for the veg, we've had enough courgettes to more than pay for the seeds, and they survived their little holiday with the neighbours for the party. They left a few presents behind, in the form of courgettes! It was a good idea to clear the garden of the more movable pots as one of my camellias lost a largish branch when James fell on it!

I tried some of the broad beans last night, cooked up with garlic, tomato, courgette, sage and thyme. It was a lovely veg combination, and in a few weeks I should be able to do it completely from the garden. We might even have some runner beans to pick by the weekend too.

The thought of having more space if the Iwade allotment project is successful is wonderful. At the moment I can only grow enough for occasional meals, or just enough for one, but with more space it would be possible to grow so many more varieties of veg that are too large for my tiny pottager plot. I went to look at the proposed site yesterday evening, very rural, which hopefully would deter vandals of the 2 legged kind, but I bet there's plenty of bunnies and birds just waiting for a delicious feed. It does have definite possibilities though so fingers crossed.