Busy busy!

It's been a lovely sunny week or two in the garden, this has helped lots as we were pretty behind due to a late start with the warm weather here in the UK.  A soggy, cool spring meant that some crops needed to be put out later than usual, but everything catches up so fast!  

For my birthday at the end of April I was bought some lovely new strawberry plants and a planter by Nath's sister and her hubby.  As you can see above they are going well, should have some nice fat strawberries off those.  I also have a few older plants in a fabric planter and a few that sneaked into the top bed of the veggie plot, I am going to leave those there, I mean as far as 'weeds' go you couldn't hope for a nicer one than the strawberry!

Another thing currently growing like there is no tomorrow is the rhubarb, this is one of 2 plants that is bordering of triffid in proportions again this year!  In a way it's a shame I have such success with rhubarb as I'm not vastly keen on the flavour.  Although...this year I have at last attempted some home brewing!  So first on my list was rhubarb wine!  I can't drink it at the moment as I am now 6 months pregnant but it'll be nicely matured by the time I can.  There are many recipes out there, but I went with this one from blogger Lovely Greens:

RHUBARB WINE

Makes 6 bottles of wine

2.3 kg [5 lb] Rhubarb

1.4 kg [3 lb] Sugar

285 ml [1/2 UK Pint / 1-1/4 cups US] Black tea, cooled (make it quite strong)

2.8 Litres Water [5 UK pints / 6 US Pints]

2 tsp Yeast Nutrient

1x 5g Sachet of White wine Yeast

Well sterilised bucket, bowl and utensils

For AFTER fermenation: 1 Campden Tablet

For the method please see the Lovely Greens Blog.  

As far as other plants go I have that I need to plant up, these are all the young hot weather plants; melon, squash, courgette and pumpkin.  I shall plant these this week I think.

My potatoes are just coming up, apparently I will get a better yield later if I fertilise them with chicken pellets (says my John's Allotment newsletter).  Given that my compost is pretty much made up of chicken poo and straw I think I shall be emptying a couple of buckets of compost on that patch.  This year I have planted Jerusalem artichokes and they are also coming up now. My runner beans have also gone in the ground now, this is my first year for runners, the slugs already managed to nibble the growing tips off 2 of them, but I am sure they will recover.