Loving the sun!

After such a long winter, to have  stretch of sunny days like this is quite a treat.  However, the weeds obviously like it even more than us because they are growing much faster than the crops we actually want to grow!!!!

We took advantage of a weekend of sun to spend as much time in Doug and Nigel as we could, with some fantastic results....

New leeks next to the beans

The main task in Doug was weeding.  Although we've managed to cover a lot of the plot with straw, there's still a few areas which are open and the weed coverage in these was phenomenal.  Plus, even the straw areas had comfrey appearing in abundance - don't get us wrong, comfrey is an amazing herb with all sorts of uses but when it tries to overtake the plot it's a little frustrating!  While I set to starting to weed in amongst the beans / peas / beetroot, parsnip and carrots, Phil managed to get much of the grassy path areas under control and watered the whole plot using dozens of trips to the water butt.  The beans and peas are growing well, as is the beetroot.  The parsnip is patchy but there are some shoots showing through and out of  a whole row of carrot - approximately 300 seeds - we have a grand sum of 5 shoots!  We are fast thinking that carrot is just not something we will ever grow!  Between us we also manged to get some chicken wire up to support the peas.  We did decide to try out tomatoes again (last year was such a wash out) so bought some plug plants from the allotment shop - three plum tomato and three standard ones - to see how they grow in Doug (more in Nigel later.)  Our greatest achievement was the planting of 60 leek plug plants - very exciting - a mixture of two types of leek which should (hopefully) provide us with some delicious additions to our winter stews. Nom Nom Nom!!!

Background fruit bushes and foreground potatoes

The soft fruit is starting to look very impressive.  If everything currently in flower or with baby fruit on actually comes to fruition we are going to have a very jammy year (pun intended)!!!  All three strawberry patches are in full bloom and have a few small fruit appearing in places.  The currant bushes are covered in small berries, as are the jostaberry (a huge bush we inherited) and the gooseberry.  The raspberries should come soon as well.  We've now had our third harvest from the huge patch of rhubarb and there's definitely more to come.  We can now recommend vanilla ice cream topped with warm, stewed home-grown rhubarb on top :P

Onions, garlic and broad beans

We are getting very excited about the onions and garlic, especially the elephant garlic which is now too big to grasp with just one hand.  Although everything is a few weeks behind this year, due to the late spring etc. we think some of the garlic will be ready to harvest almost on time.  We might leave the onions a bit longer but it's getting very hard to resist pulling any of it up to have a look :) 

Nigel is now very much a part of our crop-growing efforts - it's so wonderful to finally have a proper garden in which we can grow various crops and flowers without the fear of them being demolished by people sharing the garden.  Freya and Sophie also seem to like languishing in the shade of a chair and for us, just being able to walk out in the garden at any time of day is wonderful.  All we need now is a table and we could be eating out there too.   There was a lot of weeding to be done here too this weekend but the beds now look a lot clearer.  We nearly lost our sweet pea plants over the previous weekend but I've planted them out now to see if they can recover, including three which will hopefully climb the renovated shelf end from work which I painted to act as a trellis.  The bedding plants are beginning to flower with varying success - at least the pansies are looking good!  

Tomatoes and carrots in the growbags

We've found that now the sycamore tree next door is in leaf, the areas of Nigel we thought would get good sun aren't quite that good.  We've therefore re-assessed the area for growbags and put them up against the fence instead.  Our own-grown tomato plants weren't growing, or haven't grown much in the past few weeks so we decided to put them straight into the growbags as small plants instead of waiting for them to get to full strength first.  We now therefore have 15 assorted tomato plants (they came as a mixed set so until they mature and start to fruit, we're not sure what they will be.)  We've also experimented with another growbag and turned it on its' side to see if we can grow carrots in it.  Since we don't have any luck with carrots elsewhere, anything has got to be worth a try!  We've also got another growbag for spring onion, lettuce and radish so we have a small supply for summer salads.  Since three out of the four gherkin plants died, I've also put more seeds into the raised bed in the hope that they'll germinate quickly.  The courgette plants have each produced flowers now so we're hoping they'll flourish.  The pumpkin is growing but is yet to flower.

The coldframe

The cold frame now has a brand new set of seeds alongside the brassica plugs we've been nurturing for a few weeks.  We have two more coloured varieties of cauliflower almost ready to plant out, along with the red sprouts.  They have been joined by further seeds for sweet peas, sweetcorn and broccoli (two types of the latter with one due for harvest later this year and the other for after Christmas.)

Herbs and our new Acer tree

Our potatoes are growing well.  We're hoping the new potatoes in the border will be ready in about a month, with the two lots in tubs being ready a month or so after that.  Most of them took a while to come through but now they have, we've been having to re-cover them after only a few days.  The herbs are all looking great in their respective tubs but the catmint continues to take a bashing from ours and the other local cats - we're still not sure how long it will be before we get complaints from the neighbours about their cats coming home stoned from too much catmint!


Long may the sun continue :)