We had lots more rain, especially overnight, so I went down to check on things. About 5.5l of water had been gathered. I’ve determined that this rain has been making its way down to the earth under the gourd leaves, so I don’t need to worry about watering.

I’ve trimmed back some foliage to help – and to maybe get the air flowing a bit more. All the gourds are growing really well and there’s one huge smooth one, which definitely leads back to a gourd plant. There’s unfortunately still no sign of the pumpkin flowering and developing.

There’s now a warty gourd on the trellis that’s growing several bi-colour fruits. The other plants are very dark green.

I’ve got at least 4 pretty big Turks turbans coming along. Every time I look at my gourds I’m thinking about how they might tessellate or sit in photos.

A couple of tomatoes needed more staking. A couple of branches have split under the weight of their fruit, but like with last year’s mad broken branch,   they seem happy enough and the fruit beyond the break is fine.

The bitter melons are still trying. The branches are getting longer and I imagine that the plants have enjoyed the rain, but there’s still no sign of developing fruits – and I’m not sure I’ve seen any male flowers.

I harvested more beans while I was there, but I need to leave the yin yang beans for now. There’s no great sign of more flowers coming – though from what I read, they should. Possibly this is a flower bud and more will be coming? The French beans are similar, but don’t look quite so devoid of new flowers.

I don’t do well with sunflowers, but this year’s have been quite good. Not as tall as they should have been, of course, but they have made nice splashes of colour.

I pulled up the biggest beetroot and there was ants underneath – and then I discovered that they had been making themselves comfortable in the root. Hopefully the next biggest ones don’t have the same surprise beneath them.

I cut some sweet peas from the plant at the end of the (nearly ready) runner beans. They smell good and there are more flowers coming.