Veg growing . . .

. . . has not been so good this year. I had staggered crops of vegtables planted in the back garden for us to enjoy eating throughout the summer but because of the damp heat (28-32) a lot of the veg has failed. The peas barely garmented, struggled to produce flowers and only gave half a dozen pods and the beans also struggled to keep up with the weather. Strawberries also failed to produce a good amount of fruit, and even those few were small and odd shaped. Raspberries did a little better but still not ideal.

The other plants are doing well, I suspect another bumper crop of chillis, with the exception of some strange moth eaten leaves - quite possibly actually being eaten by moths!


The onions are doing brilliantly and the carrots are looking good too but both are slow growers, although I think the first set of onions will need much longer before they are ready. I am disappointed by the quick crop failure, and I'm still buying fresh produce from the supermarket :(

Pirate treasure under New York?

Whilst working at the ground zero site of the twin towers in New York diggers found something interesting last tuesday — the 10-meter hull of an old ship!

The New York Times reports:

"The vessel was probably used along with other debris to fill in land to extend lower Manhattan into the Hudson river, archaeologists have said. It was hoped the artefact could be retrieved by the end of today, said archaeologist Molly McDonald. A boat specialist was going to the Ground Zero site to examine the find. McDonald said she wanted to at least salvage some timbers; it was unclear if any large portions could be lifted intact. "We're mostly clearing it by hand because it's fragile," she said. A 45kg (100lb) metre long anchor was found a few yards from the hull on Wednesday but the experts are not sure if it belongs to the ship. The archaeologists are racing to record and analyse the vessel before exposure to air makes the delicate wood deteriorate."

More from the NYT, including photos.