A few months ago we picked up some plants (cheap) from a community garden stall outside Crystal Palace park (here). There’s been a bit of growth since then and the Persicaria (description from the excellent Go Gardening Facebook group: “It’s a perennial & once established spreads quite rapidly. It sends up tall..usually red…flower stalks with small flowers”) is now sending up those red flowers. 

The Sweet rocket (Hesperis Matronalis – from the Go Gardening Facebook group: “It’s a biennial or short lived perennial”) has now some nice white flowers on it. That was a great few bargains we bought that day, sure all the plants were £2.50 each!

We also had a suprise today when making space for new sowings of lettuce, basil and parsley and found some beetroot from a plant we thought was some sort of Perpetual Spinach. We pulled them up and got these light coloured baby beets which we boiled for half an hour. Not bad for something we didn’t know we had!