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Thank you Jeannine for your kind offer, good to know.  Fortunately, I used to have several seed swaps and also seed buys late last and early this century when it was all still so easy.  My last seed buy from the USA was the amazing Homesteaders Kaleidoscope kale, which still got through.  One of my early seed buys was from Denali seeds in Alaska, a summer squash, and I hope to be offering seeds from that in the seed circle later this year.  And there were so many treasures in the big transatlantic parcel, which still delight and get saved every year. 

Yes the weather is seriously out of whack.  Here too.  We never had temperatures beyond 35C ever and 30C was quite rare.  We got let out of school if the mercury hit 28C as kids.  Well nowadays the kids would never be in school!  It will be a challenge to the varieties we used to grow.  Will they adapt or will we be looking at new varieties, new species even?  Sowing and harvesting times are also shifted, as are frost dates. But nothing is predictable any longer.  Certainly storms are worse and flooding is becoming common place in some areas.

I am not surprised your crab apples are ready now, a good month early.

Sad to have lost contact with Tatiana and with Jayb, just hope they are well and enjoy their new interests. 

Hope that sun puts in an appearance for you.  It is only August and we you may yet get a good bit of summer.  I guess your first frost is not until October, so quite a while off yet. 

Hi Galina. I am Ok just an old crock almost now but plodding on. I have 2 Mayoral Blue growing strong which are fine and 2 smaller ones which I think have stopped growing so I am not so sure about them bu the 2 bigger ones should give me enough seeds to get some over to you to share.

No I have not heard  from Jayb in years either. She did post on Tomatoville in the US and I did send PMs there but no answer and now that forum has closed down and so has Tatianna's . Her data base is still there but she is no longer selling seeds etc. She used to be a very close neighbor of mine, just 3 miles away and we became quite good friends but she bought a farm as she wanted to raise specialty chickens but it is a few hundred from me and we lost touch. She is on Facebook with her paintings but has nothing to do with seeds now

Our sun has not come back, this is 5 days now and am wondering if we are getting a particularly early fall, our warm weather cane very early this year. I sowed the squash much earlier than I usually would and kept uplanting them in pots in the greenhouse till it was warm enough outside so they got going pretty quick.

My crab apples are ready for picking and I generally don't do that till late September even into October so something is out of whack.

By the way, if you need anything from the US or Canada and they won't mail it direct., have it sent here and I will send it onto you

XX Jeannine

Sorry to hear that things have gone this bad with your back Jeannine.  Presumably you have tried all that physio and chiropracters have to offer and things are beyond their powers of influence.  Hope you are getting relief from the medication and it has enabled you to partake of more of the good experiences in life. 

I keep looking at the photos on Tatiana's site and hope that these Mayoral squashes will continue thriving.  Just reread that Jayb had been planning on growing them, but that was over ten years ago and we don't know how it worked out for her.  Sadly we have not heard from her for years now.  I keep messaging occasionally, but no reply.  Hope she is well. Maybe you have heard from her?



 

How did the plot work out over the season Debs?

Here the weather is crazy too.  Have never known 37C in my childhood before I came to England.  We got to go home from school early if it was 28C!  Well the kids would not be in school at all these days.  Having said that, we also had a very autumnal spell like you are having at the moment, Jeannine, before this crazy heat broke out. 

The weather definitely is changing in front of our eyes and it will test which of our varieties can adapt and which will not. 

And your racoons do sound like a pest you could do without.  Fingers crossed. 

Racoons are visiting regularly now for the grapes and I see they have been picking my crab apples,fingers crossed they don't decide to try my squash.
I am  relieved the beans are flowering. Our weather has gone from roaring inferno to rainy and cool overnight so am a bit worried that this might be it for us, it is only mid August but it is not unknown, as long as we don't get frost we should be OK

Yes, it is less of a struggle here, I will freely admit.  But I managed to keep almost all of my varieties going in Rushden too, at times resorting to growing them in the greenhouse.  So I sympathise.  Most parts of Britain are at the edge of what squashes love in terms of growing conditions. 

This was my rationale when I bought these Straightneck squash seeds from an Alaskan seed company.  If they succeed there, surely they also do in Rushden!  And they did.  So I hope all will go well with this fruit.  It has changed shape, put on at least another 2 inches in length and is now getting fatter at the bottom, more club shaped. 

Congratulations on getting the Hungarian to work for you, Jang.  It is so frustrating to have several male flowers and waiting for a female, or when we have a heatwave, it is the opposite, the plants develop female flowers, but there are no males.  it is nice when it all comes together. 

By the way, that Golden Marbre Squash was still perfectly edible in March, when I harvested the seeds.  I cut it into wedges along the bumps and fried them.  Almost like winter squash, - patty pans do tend to keep reasonably well. 

It will be great to have your Golden Marbre squash, Galina. I've become more and more of a fan of pattypan squash over the last two or three years. One cuts up and roasts so easily for two or three people as an accompaniment for summer vegetables.
It seems to take a lot of application in the UK to catch any cucurbits for hand pollination,so that I'm lucky if I succeed with more than one or two a year. This year I have one large hand pollinated courgette from your Hungarian zucchini, galina, which I think I successfully hand pollinated. It's a courgette I value for being early and productive, so I hope to have those seeds ready in time to contribute.

Just noticed that RealSeeds retail this too, but a different strain of it.  Mine were from Denali Seeds in Alaska, bought when getting seeds from the USA was still widely possible some twenty years ago.  This strain has the number 353, but its history also goes back nearly 90 years. 

Here are both urls, first RealSeeds
https://www.realseeds.co.uk/courgettes.html

then Denali, my source of seeds
https://www.bestcoolseeds.com/collections/squash/products/squash-summer-early-prolific-straightneck-353

Here is the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash also growing this year.  This fruit is isolated/handpollinated and I hope its seeds will be ready in time for the circle distribution.