Poppies taking over the veg patch, our few veggies this year and some dragonflies

Lots more damselflies have appeared around the pond and from some zoomed in photos I've identified White Legged and Azure damselflies, as well as the Blue-tailed which has been around all month. Have also seen a Brilliant Emerald dragonfly which perched nicely for me, despite my reading that they rarely perch! Also seen a Clubtail, plus there is the usual big green one who refuses to ever perch, and I've seen one Broad Bodied Chaser. At least they make up for the lack of variety with the butterflies in my garden, although I've started seeing some Skippers appearing now along with Marbled Whites, and Painted Ladies back again. I've just seen a Brimstone this afternoon, which must be a newly emerged second brood one. So maybe things are looking up after all!

Finally, I think I've managed to ID this one as the Western Clubtail (Gomphus pulchellus),
which I think is different from the one in my last post.

More pics that I managed to get this afternoon.

Another view of the Western Clubtail - any experts out there who know better please let me know!

Brilliant Emerald (Somatochlora metallica) dragonfly, male.

Close up of the Brilliant Emerald - apparently my pond with overhanging willows for shade,
and leaf and twig litter on the pond bed and nearby mature trees, is their perfect habitat!

The veg patch has been looking stunning with all the self seeded Oriental Poppies flowering. It's a shame their season is so short lived though. Onto veggies, I couldn't understand why my 'new' potatoes were being so tardy and had only just started flowering, especially as Belle de Fontenay don't normally flower. The mystery was solved when I dug up the first plant and discovered large pinky red spuds that look just like the maincrop Desiree that I normally grow, but chose not to this year. Hmmmm. On closer inspection it seemed that some plants without flowers had different sized and coloured leaves, and digging up one of them revealed my B de Fs (or something similar). How completely bizarre! I bought them from the usual garden centre and I didn't notice anything unusual when putting them to chit in egg boxes. So it seems we will have some maincrops after all!

Something went horribly wrong with my spuds this year!

Our meagre crops this year - 4 whole parsnip plants germinated!
Various lettuce being successionally sown, carrots and some more
coriander has been sown. Courgettes/zucchini out of
the picture are just about ready to have the first ones harvested.

Ladybird pupa which just happens to be on a parsnip leaf!

I should mention that I have a lovely English neighbour who has been around several times and weeded my messy strawberry beds, and is going to tackle the asparagus bed next. I'm glad that she was happy to pick raspberries and blackcurrants for herself, because I hate seeing things going to waste, and it's the least I can do to say thanks!

Opium Poppies (Papaver somniferum).

The Coriander patch gone mad with Opium Poppies
and Borage growing through it -
the pollinators absolutely love all these flowers!

These Opium Poppies come in singles and doubles and all colours of red and mauve.

In the shade under the Greengage tree, with Borage
and Sweet William in the background.

Opium Poppy and a Honey Bee.

Bumble Bees early this morning going crazy for the pollen!
Love the orange pollen baskets.

Poppies going over - still attractive until the seed heads start to dry out.

Wild Poppies and Phacelia self seeded by the compost bins.

Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium) which has self seeded all over the place,
with a male Thick Legged Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis).

Scarily the temps are supposed to rise well into the 30s this week, which is just too hot, and means lots of watering.  I hope I'll feel well enough to help K - I have already done some hosepiping as I can't lift full watering cans yet. He has put shade cloth over the lettuce as my first cos lettuce had already started to bolt and it's such a disappointment waiting three months for your fave crunchy lettuce to heart up, only for them to bolt just as they are ready - or worse, before they even mature!

I meant to add this to my previous post - seen from up the lane
across the maize field, the thickly wooded area
is the end of my woodland garden.

I was missing these guys but was happy to find three final instar Swallowtail
(Papilio machaon) caterpillars in my Bronze Fennel in front of the house.

Bertie takes every opportunity to steal my cushions as soon as I stand up.....

I love you, Mummy.

Cheeky monkey!

Meanwhile Harry finds a cosy shady nest.....

I'll finish with two firsts.....our first courgette/zucchini and the first meal that I have cooked entirely by myself in over four months! This lot was slathered in olive oil, roasted for about 40 mins and then served with lots of cubed feta cheese, which goes so well with roasted Mediterranean veggies. Some baguette to mop up the juices of course (it's always better with juicy home grown tomatoes, but we've got to wait a while for them). Keith was very pleasantly surprised, and I felt so good to have achieved something! And I scoffed my share and could have eaten more..... :-)

Dinner!

Veg patch update - June

Just a quick note to say that if you are a subscriber by email, you will not see the videos embedded in the blog posts, not even a still to let you know that there is one there. I noticed the same thing on Feedly, although if you press the Preview button on Feedly you can then view the videos. So email subscribers you'll have to come direct to the blog to see my videos of the Swallowtail butterfly eclosing!

This is a pure gardening post; I also have tons of interesting bugs found recently in the veg patch, but I'll post that separately, otherwise this post would be way too long! But before you skip this if you are a bug rather than gardening lover, I want to let you know that the Swallowtail who fell out of its cradle whilst pupating, eclosed yesterday with no problems whatsoever and is now outside doing what Swallowtails do. Phew! 

Earlier in June when the grass was nice and green -
but since then I have nice new gravel spread on the drive!

The rest of the photos are taken in the last week of June. I was plagued by problems earlier in the year. First the various different lettuce that I sowed in March under cover nearly all failed to germinate. Annoyingly, French seed packets seem to think that lettuce seed is good for about 6 years, whilst British seed packets seem to give you about 1-2 years before their 'best before date'. I think it is actually somewhere in between.

The next two sowings after buying more seed I lost about 80% to slugs; this includes spinach which I was growing for the first time. Those that survived then got munched by sparrows so I had to cover every plant with a cloche! I was reduced to sowing seeds in pots in the cold frame which have now been planted out. Of course by the time these plants got near to maturity (and I'm still waiting on cos and batavia which need 2-3 months to heart up) the weather turned really hot and dry. I have spent so many hours watering I get so fed up by it all. I would buy lettuce but sadly in France there is very little choice and all the lettuce sold here is very floppy and I only like hearted crunchy lettuce, so I have no choice but to grow my own. 

Strawbs, lettuce, the cucumber frame, spinach already bolting and a strip of flowers near the
fence. I have taken out the borage now and planted annuals which are attractive to pollinators.
Oh, and those are mulot traps, a burrowing mouse which is a complete and utter pest
which tunnels under all my strawberries.

This is the weird disease which is affecting my dill plants.
I don't sow dill, it self seeds everywhere but as it's an important
food source for Swallowtail caterpillars I'm a bit concerned.

I'm getting more and more into having flowers in the veg patch and some I plant, and some
appear all of their own accord. In the background where you see the yellow flowers,
that is my Pollinator Meadow Year 3 and still doing its job of looking great
and attracting tons of bees, hoverflies and butterflies.

My early potatoes (Belle de Fontenay) have taken longer to mature this year and I had to set up seep hoses along the ridges of the potatoes because it's impossible to water them when they are earthed up.

Potato flowers are attractive too!

Behind the spuds I planted sunflowers which I grew from seed,
but in the middle there's one that self seeded from last year
(they were whoppers) and the opium poppies are self seeded.
There are also two potimarrons (a French pumpkin) in this area.

Opium poppies again. These are the ones that produce the seeds
that you buy for culinary purposes so I'll be collecting seed
from them later on. Never done it before but
I'm 99% sure I've got the right variety!

Harry and some tomatoes.

Annoyingly this year I could not buy a barquette of six of my favourite tomato variety and buying individually was too expensive, so I only have three plants, although I've propagated three more from side shoots. This variety (Fournaise) is really early to form fruit as you can see here. Even my cherry toms have only a few toms actually forming yet and the six Premio variety which I did buy in a barquette are very slow to form fruit.

Fournaise, my favourite, best producing tomato.

Looking from the lettuce/spinach bed towards the pea and bean bed with another strip of flowers for pollinators on the right by the perimeter fence. The empty gaps on the left foreground are spring onions which have been sown, these are taking forever to germinate and I am getting maybe one for every 20 seed sown even with brand new seed. I have found over the years that some years they just will not germinate, and other times they germinate no problem at all. And it's got nothing to do with the weather. A mystery.

Lettuce and spinach bed looking towards peas and beans
with my large Greengage tree in the background.

Another disappointment this year were the sugar snap peas which I had to buy in England as they don't exist in France. Big mistake. Not only were there ordinary peas which had got into the packet too but apart from the first few pickings, they are really stringy and tough even when I pick them young before they swell up (which they do really quickly) so they are all being composted now. What a waste. I'll stick to French mange tout in future which are miles better. Of course it may have been because the weather turned hot and sunny and I just couldn't water enough, but a veg like that has no place in my dry garden.

Sugar Snaps.

Rust is very prevalent here and my garlic always has rust (leeks always have it too to a lesser degree, and sometimes spring onions, and one year even the plums succumbed to it!), but this year it was even worse and the heads have not swelled up as much as normal; having said that I never get through all the garlic that I grow so not a probem. And they still store fine.

Rusty garlic lifted.

The Pollintor Meadow Year 3.
The Phacelia in the foreground I allowed to grow because it is short lived;
my leeks will be transplanted into this area later.
And in the distance many more self seeded flowers growing around the peas!

An older photo when the sugar snaps were still tender, with spinach and a courgette.
The courgettes are doing really well!

Another disappoinment are my aubergines. I've only tried once before here in Brittany, growing them in pots and I had not a single fruit. This year they are in the ground and the leaves just yellowed and they refused to grow at all. I have given them a supplementary feed specific to this kind of veg so will wait and see if anything happens. I'm annoyed because one neighbour nearby grew them really successfully last year! I used to grow them easy peasy when I lived the other side of France too. 

And now fruit - soft fruit is always good and reliable here but the fruit on the trees not so. But things are looking good - we have the most amazing crop of cherries which have not split nor have they been munched by birds! Also the three plum trees which are near the veg patch are absolutely loaded with fruit. One tree has more fruit in three foot of branch than it's ever produced in the previous nine years! However..... I won't know until they are ripe if they are any good as brown rot attacks them four out of five years and it gets them just before they are ready to pick.

But raspberries, strawberries, black and red currants are doing well and I can hardly keep up with the harvesting!

Cherries, greengage top right and unknown dessert plum bottom left.

Garden jobs and first harvest

Instead of showing pretty pictures of flowers and the garden looking at its best, I feel like showing some pictures of jobs I've been doing about the place. Oh OK, as well as. Of course I want to post photos of what's in bloom, but there's some work that goes on 'behind the scenes' too! I feel like I have finally caught up with all the jobs that needed doing since coming back from my holiday, mostly planting/sowing, pruning and horrendous weeding, and now I have just the routine chores to do, which I hope I can keep on top of.

First up, it was time for my straggly old Rosemary to have a haircut. This photo doesn't show it looking at its worst but I did want to show at least one photo of the front garden looking reasonable...... ;-)

Back in May when the Aquilegias were at their best - the Rosemary is the straggly thing
flowering right at the back behind the fluffy Bronze Fennel

Errrrm, a haircut? Where did it go?

Ooops.

Well it needed it, yes really. And under all that mess where it had rooted into the gravel, I found two new plants of a reasonable, about 18" tall, size. Also two walnut trees, more chives and lord knows what else.  Most of which have to come out but if it's something that hasn't flowered yet it has had a reprieve. I haven't completely butchered the rosemary as it actually has some fresh growth right down back into the thick woody stems. I must add that this was one of the nicest smelling garden jobs ever, even better than pruning lavender!

We'll see if it can come back to life and form a reasonable shape
after this major haircut!

In the following photo, although you can't see because I never took a before photo (because I hadn't realised before that I was going to go slash, hack and chop crazy), I have chopped off the 3-4 foot long new growth from the honeysuckle on the wall, lifted the canopy of the purple Prunus a bit (which is finally growing into something actually resembling a tree, at long last), pruned back about half as much again on that ivy covered tree stump, and finally, for the first time ever, pruned the Eleagnus into something resembling a shape. That's the shrub on the left. As you can see by the pile of jackets on the ground, I didn't start off warm, but I ended up pretty hot!

Sometimes I do some work in the garden :-)

Although mostly shade lovers in here,
they are happy to have some light again!

Then there was the weeding. And edging. I expected the grass to grow, but the weeds have been worse than normal this year because I mulched everything non veggy with our best home made compost. Unfortunately that's full of weed seeds.

Somewhere in here there are plants that are not weeds.

I allowed the red poppy to stay!

In fact this border has become twice as wide, because there are flowers on
the other side of the fence in the veg patch now. On purpose!

I've often got shrubs that need a home, but I don't know where to put them! Here we had a brainwave to try to screen off some more of the hideous propane tank. I know the shrub in the background looks like a dead twig, but it does actually have some leaves and is a kind of Lonicera which my parents in law grew from a cutting for us. It will grow enormous and have to be kept under control, and is very highly perfumed. I've forgotten what it's called offhand. I have another one too and don't know where to put that one! In the front is a variegated Dogwood (Cornus (probably) alba), another cutting that came from a friend's garden. I've got to really stop this taking cuttings business!

One day they will screen the tank a bit!

Harvest time - first of all the Elderflowers are putting on a magnificent display this year, and have been flowering for several weeks now. I've made two lots of Elderflower cordial, and there'll be loads of berries in the autumn for the birds, and for me should I want to make any jelly or cordial.

I have a couple of trees beside the stream in the orchard.
Elders don't get planted, they just appear, thanks to bird droppings!

They have really pretty flowers

Strawberries have been fantastic and whilst they are coming towards the end there are still plenty more to pick! I've made two batches of jam and given some fresh strawbs away, and we've been eating them twice a day for a couple of weeks now. They have really appreciated the cooler weather. Recipes for Elderflower Cordial and Strawberry Conserve posted last year here.

Yikes. Strawberries. Lots of.

This isn't really a veg patch update per se, but when you've just spend hours hand weeding in amongst your Alliums, can you blame yourself for wanting to post a photo of it looking pristine, for that five minutes that it lasts?

Spuds in the background. Allium bed with, from left to right:
Garlic, Leek seedlings, blank space colonised by Magenta Orach and Dill, Red Onions, Shallots and Parsnips.
With a Sunflower planted in a gap.

Which leads me to.......

Hoorah! At last, our first new Potatoes (Belle de Fontenay). And more strawberries!

And now I've just noticed that the Raspberries are starting to be ready to pick. Help! :-)