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.

In the Heat of Summer - *boing* vegetables appeared!

Here, have a picture of the side of my head (Nath's poopy photography skills meant rejection of gurning shots) with Amy(pink collar) and Jack ('the white one').

Well there isn't much heat at the moment, but there was heat, and plenty of sun (and in England too...who'd have guessed!), which meant our veggies have grown big and healthy. There are loads of fat pods on the peas, finger sized baby carrots have miraculously appeared in the ground and this surprise purple radish has just been discovered...it's huge!!!!!! Shame I hate radish (why is it even considered a vegetable?!), but I'm sure Nathan will enjoy it! The garlic have wilted right down, though the leaves are still green, I don't think they should be lifted yet, but I lifted one as an experiment, it's not bad...not massive but it smells good. The pea was scoffed about 2 minutes after this picture was taken, it's friends will share it's fate soon! In other news I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm too fond of brackets (but maybe it's fine).

Strawberries!

My first strawberries are starting to form! A work mate gave me these plants, they'd been started off in a greenhouse so have a nice head start. Now they are sitting in the sun trap of my patio, behind a gate where the hounds can't get to them (it's not just the widdling that's a problem when big dogs are around plants...they are quite fond of 'pick your own', so I have to hide soft fruits from greedy woofers). The bag was also kindly gifted, it's a huge bag and the strawberries are already taking over like mad things. I've never grown my own strawberries before, I'm excited to see if they taste different to shop bought!

More on the main plot later...

Potato planting..go go go!

This is me looking particularly not dressed for planting the seed potatoes, and I am very white because I am freezing my butt off because I fannied about all day in the garden centre and then had a mad attack of garden guilt and came home dug the middle raised bed to aerate it and planted stuff at 7ish. This blog is full of tres flattering pictures of me, I might start gardening in eyeliner and lippy! ;op. First in the raised beds is Maris Piper Potatoes. Nomnom!

Top quote of today's garden exercise (after a discussion on giving away some of the millions of seeds potatoes we have for the price of a beer...) Nath (in an inadvertent slightly cockney accent) - "ah but the bed is slightly canted", Bex - "wait...are we back to the beer again?".


A pic of raised beds:

There are 3 beds, two long ones and one shorter one, to allow for the collection of water from the water butt sitting the end of the shed. They are really long beds, I think we might be growing food for the whole road! My earlier idea of joining the Hugh F-W landshare program (to garden someone else's land) may not be needed!

I'm thinking I might put the garden furniture at this end on the decking, could be a pleasant spot to sit.

Argh...no more digging...make it stop!

So, last weekend there was more digging (see title!), we also accomplished the following tasks

• Filled a second Hippo bag full of stones and turf and bits of unidentifiable plastic gubbins.



• Cleared out all the fallen conifer bits from round the back of the shed, which are already leaf mould, so I'll stick those in the raised beds.



• Fixed the slipped fence panel on the back fence that may have been allowing ingress of rats!



• Noting with delight that the rats now seem to have gone!
  


• More digging!
  


• Scrubbing the deck(ing) and the patio.

See..pics to prove it! Note the ridiculous use of New Rock boots to garden in. There is a point actually, they have no treads so I don't trail mud into the house...but they do make you look a bit of a tit while gardening.