How can so much happen in a single week? When we headed off to Cornwall last weekend, the garden was happily pootling along. Today we come back, and a week of sunshine and some careful watering from the builder has seen the whole place go mad.

The greenhouse was laden with countless red and yellow tomatoes, the blackberry bush heavy with fruit, and the peppers now at the size where you’d start to think about picking and eating them.

So we harvested 5.5kg of tomatoes and ordered some jars to make chutney tomorrow, picked blackberries to put in the freezer and dug up a bag full of beetroot to make beetroot loaf, which by all reports is like a red version of carrot cake.

The only real casualty was the broccoli, which has come to the end of its run. It’s now entirely gone to seed and is sporting eight bunches of cheery yellow flowers, which are what the broccoli head eventually becomes if you leave it too long.

Related posts:

1. Beetroot cake
2. Carrots
3. How to boil (and freeze) beetroot