Veg patch 2nd June

I keep on taking photos and never getting round to posting them, and then everything's gone and grown again! Right, so here are some pics of the veg patch taken during the last week!

First one is an overview, this was taken a couple of days ago as I'd just thinned out the lettuce. For Mr (Annony) Mouse who was asking about my wildflower bed - it's the strip in this first bed marked with pegs (you may have to click on the photo and look on your giant mac screen). I sowed the seed in diagonal lines so I could tell what was a wildflower rather than my usual weeds. It should be interesting as it's a mix especially for pollinators. This by the way is the space that would have been sweetcorn but I decided not to grow any this year as it's so hit and miss (explanation here).

Overview May 31st

I forgot I'd taken another photo of it! By the way the space above on the right (and below top right) is the frame for my cucumbers for when they are finally big enough to plant out! I grow them upwards which they do very well so they don't take up too much ground space.

'Wildflower meadow'

Spuds taken about a week ago, but I wanted a photo after earthing them up, when there were no weeds, so everyone would think what a neat and tidy gardener I am! The first two rows on the left are Belle de Fontenay which is a lovely early potato and the other smaller ones are Desiree, a red maincrop which stores really well. We were still eating last year's until about a month ago.

Beautiful weed free rows of spuds

Next one was taken about a week ago as the kale and PSB are still in place. My peas are flowering away merrily but I'm still waiting for the mange tout to start flowering and getting very impatient.

Sure enough blackfly has appeared on the broad beans but there are at least 4 red ladybirds and one of those tiny yellow and black ones on the plants. I have put down two saucers of old strawberry jam in the hope of enticing the ants to take more interest in that than protecting their aphids (blackfly), which they farm for the honeydew that the aphids secrete. If the ants are off the plants then the ladybirds can get in for the kill. That's the theory anyway; one year it worked and another I had a swarm of honeybees eating the jam so quickly I kept having to give them more!

Pea flowers, with broad beans in foreground

The peas are starting to swell up now and I have three successive sowings. I don't even really like peas very much, except raw! I am such a lovely wife, I am growing them for my OH, who adores them.

A pea pod

Just another view of peas, strawbs and spuds. My OH put a small bench in the veg patch for me so I can just sit and survey my domain! It's a bit hot sitting here though and there are stinging nettles right behind coming through the fence from the field!

Back of house from the potager

Little Gem lettuce which I sowed early into a pot protected in a cold frame then pricked out and later planted into this funny plasticky cold frame from Lidl. I'm so glad I did as this is miles ahead of the April sowing of various lettuces direct into the ground, so we have finally had our first harvest of something grown this year!

Little Gem lettuce

The best thing that's happening right now though are the strawberries. I have tons of Gariguette, which are an early non remontant variety. That means they only flower and fruit once. I also have a remontant called Charlotte (not to be confused with the spud of the same name!) which is incredibly sweet and that's already ripening up too and will continue to produce fruit until the autumn. I've just planted out a new row of Charlottes so between these two varieties I have 6 rows of strawbs! Maybe a bit OTT but they are on rotation and one row of Gariguette is on year 3 and will be taken out after fruiting.

Gariguette strawberries, netted against the birds

First strawberry harvest about a week ago. Since then they have gone bananas (haha) with the warm weather we've been having and last night I picked two plastic tubs worth and the fruit is bigger now. I guess I'll be making jam again (to feed to the ants!) and I really need to remember to get that darn ice cream maker bowl into the freezer!!!

YUM!

What I haven't bothered to show yet is the onion plot as it's got some pink Roscoff onions doing nicely in it and some very small leeks and spring onions, so not a lot to show really. I'm currently in the process of planting out my pathetically small chillies into the space where the winter brassicas were. Cross fingers they will start to grow now they are in the soil!

Swallows zooming over the veg patch and perching on the cane tops

One last piccy which won't win any awards but just to show another use for cane tops. I noticed the swallows as I was taking buggy pics so shot (that sounds so wrong!) them from afar with the macro lens, which effectively zooms in on them. One was perching on the tomato canes. I love these birds!

How I cope without a greenhouse

It's that time of year. Not that the risk of frost has past, far from it, but it is time to start getting my tender plants outside and used to the higher light levels, and more importantly for some, used to direct sunlight.

Three different bedrooms in use at the moment!

The biggest problem I have with overwintering geraniums (pelargoniums to be absolutely precise) and other tender plants indoors is that all the interesting leaf colour of the geraniums gets faded indoors, even though they are sitting beside windows and do get direct sun for part of the day. Also, even though they are in unheated rooms they still require a fair amount of water and I tend to neglect them - out of sight, out of mind!



















So when they go outside these tender pale leaves would get absolutely frazzled by the sun and therefore I have to ensure they are in total shade to start with (which entails a lot of moving them about as the day goes by) until they can start to be introduced to sunlight, little by little. In no time at all the leaf markings start to appear - it's quite amazing what a difference natural light makes. 

Leaf markings have practically
disappeared from this plant

This was closer to the window so
the new leaves are closer to
the normal markings

Of course, at the moment, I still have to bring them inside at night time too - so there is a lot of moving around of plants to be done!

It's also time to start getting those poor leggy tomatoes out into the cold frames during the day so that they can start to get some proper light and grow as they should. Now they can take a bit of sun directly onto them but what they can't take is any wind as they are too weak and spindly, so it's imperative that they are in the cold frames for shelter until they have built up some size and strength in their stems (and by then I start to stake them anyway). It has been interesting to note that the Gardeners' Delight cherry tomatoes are far less leggy than Apero, and that the Piment d'Espelette are not leggy at all whereas the Jalapenos are now quite tall by comparison. Either way, they are barely growing in terms of new leaves and so they need to go out during the day - and yet more plants to bring in at night! So it's a busy time of year.

Great cold frame which my OH made
for me many years ago

I'll then have to clean the two spare bedrooms that I have been using as greenhouses and my poor OH will have to struggle down two flights of stairs with a giant oleander and a plumbago. I left my other oleander out all winter as I have a third, very old one which lives in a pot outdoors all year round; although it looks like it has karked it many a time it always comes back even if I do have to chop off some frosted branches and pick off many a frosted leaf. In fact this year if we hadn't had that severe cold spell at the beginning of February I don't think they would have frosted at all, but they both look rather tatty right now.

So, cold frame no. 2 has been brought out as that's now filling up with pots with seeds sown such as cucumber, courgettes, potimarron, various different French beans and parsley, which was sown on 19 March and there is no sign of as yet. But I don't care as a friend gave me some parsley seedlings so all is well! I bought this cold frame last year from a supermarket and it's perfect except... there's always something that doesn't work with these bought cold frames... you can't open the lid fully. You can leave it ajar on little fixings, or open it 3/4 of the way but you have to keep holding it open whilst you move plants around. Sigh. So I have to take the entire lid off which is then fiddly to put back on - not ideal when it could pour down with rain at any time.

I did once have a real proper grown up greenhouse, which I treated myself to when we bought our previous house in 2001. However we didn't stay there all that long as 'things' aka 'life' aka - all right I'm going to swear - 'shit' happened, as it does, so we had to move. We couldn't face dismantling the thing and packaging it all up carefully along with all the other stresses of moving, so left it behind.

Rubbish scanned tif file that I can't be bothered to redo;
that's not our old house next to it (!!), that was
'The Cottage', a garage conversion!

Then when we moved here to Chateau Moorhen, I treated myself to one of these cheap €60 jobs. Which lasted all of 5 days until it collapsed and buckled in a faint breeze.

So these days I stick to spare bedrooms and cold frames as they are somewhat more reliable, easier to install, cheaper to run and don't tend to blow over. It does work, in its own way.