It's all go.




The bee border plants

  

The Veg Bed

Everything is growing so well now. After the really dry April and May, where I was out every other day giving all the pots and borders a water, June turned out to be a month of sunshine and showers here. Perfect for plants. The bee border plants have grown on really well, and I really like the flower colour combination now I can see it because they are all in flower. I still haven't got round to sorting out the soil of the bed that they are going into. Although because I've emptied the first of my potato bags (got about 5 one-person portions of new potatoes out of it) I've now got some used compost I can use as soil improver in the bed, so it's all in place. The veg bed is looking really lush at the moment. The broad beans are nearly done. Just waiting for the last of the beans to fatten up a bit before I pick them. We got about 10 baby beetroot from the first 'thinning' . I cooked them up, as per the instructions I found on the internet, and froze them for use over the summer. Got a couple out the other day for the other half to have with his luncheon. Turns out they were absolutely tasteless and totally the wrong consistency. Obviously the cooking instructions I got were completely wrong. A cautionary tale for researching internet advice a bit further.



My frozen crops of raspberries, broad beans, and mangetout

The beetroot might have been a failure, but I am having great success with the Golden Sweet Mangetout. After my initial thought that I wouldn't get much of a crop off of the 8 plants I trained up the fence, it turns out to be a very good producer. I go out every day, if possible, and pick it over. I've got a freezer bag on the go, so I just pop them in there (unblanched, I tried blanching them last year and it made them a bit soggy when they were unfrozen, so I'm trying freezing them this way). We've had about 5 meals with fresh, straight from plant-to-plate, mangetout too. So it's really doing well. And saving us a fortune. I won't buy mangetout in the supermarket. £1 for about 12 pods is rubbish value when they are so easy to grow yourself. The 9 Crimson Flowered Broad Bean plants produced roughly half a supermarket size bag of beans. Which is ok, considering that it's supposed to be a bad bean year because of the hot, dry weather, and I know you need a ton of plants to get a really good harvest. I'm pleased with my crop, and they are really, really sweet tasting compared with shop bought. We've had quite a few meals with fresh beans, and I've got a bag of frozen excess for when the fresh-from-the-plant are over. Finally, the early (left a third of last year's stems to grow on and fruit, rather than prune them off in February) autumn fruiting raspberries. I picked the canes over every day, same as the mangetout, and froze the berries. We did have a few straight from the bush to eat, but I wanted to build up a supply in the freezer to use in a recipe. I am going to turn them into raspberry ripple ice-cream. I only decided this after I'd picked all the fruit off the canes, so I  wasn't sure if I'd got enough. The recipe calls for 400g. I weighed what I'd got when I picked off the last berries, and I have got 397g! What a complete fluke. I had a quick look to see how much they would have cost to buy, £4! I've still got the 'proper' autumn fruit to come from the other two thirds of canes in the pots. Hopefully they'll be as productive. If the icecream comes out ok, I'll post up the recipe. I think mangetout, raspberries, and strawberries are some of the most economical crops for grow your own.

Tomato Tumbler F1

My first tomato in the hanging baskets is ripening. The plants aren't the leafiest, greenest plants you'll ever see. I think I've neglected them a bit too much. I think they need watering a lot more than I do. And they definitely need feeding more. But, even so, all the baskets have got a nice lot of cherry tomatoes forming, and ripening. Another very economical crop because they go on flowering and producing for ages.

Actually, I think berries, as a whole, are one of the most economical things you can grow. Berries are very expensive in the supermarkets. I think it's because farmers need to employ pickers to harvest them because machinary could bruise the fruit. The blueberries have started to ripen too. I am usually very good at keeping labels from plants so I know what I've got. I cannot find the label from these DIY-store bought blueberries anywhere. I think they might be either Earliblue, or Top Hat.

Defender Courgette

Can I add another economical cropper to the list?

Courgette. You get so many courgettes from one plant, if you keep picking them while they are young. I've already had one baby courgette and it's only just started flowering in the last few weeks. It'll go on for ages yet, as long as I keep it watered well, and pick off the courgettes at a small stage. I think 7 baby courgettes cost about £1.50, so growing your own saves quite a lot there too.
Not so economical are carrots. I've got a couple of rows of Nantes Early on the go. I've thinned out about 10 medium sized carrots from them for various meals. They may not be saving you much money, but they taste much better than shop bought.

Pea Lincoln

Peas aren't going to save you a fortune either. You need quite a lot of pods for one meal. I've grown a small row even so, because the other half is quite keen on peas. So I pop out and pick off a meal's worth when I need to. The other half seems impressed with them, saying they are really sweet and fresh tasting. I've grown an old heritage variety, 'Lincoln'. I figured that because we are fairly close to Lincolnshire and we are on the same soil this pea should do well. And it has.

June Drop of the apples

It pays to look up some of these old fruit and veg varieties. Especially with apple trees. There are old varieties that were found growing in certain areas of the country, so you know they'll do well if you live near that area. Mind you, my Laxton's Superb has suffered from 'June Drop'. I'd never heard of it before, but it turns out it's the tree naturally pruning itself of any apples it thinks it won't be able to ripen. Clever, huh. Thing is, as my tree is probably a far too vigorous root stock to be kept in a pot, it's pruned itself of quite a lot of apples. I.e. nearly all of them. You live, you learn. I think I'll have to look for a proper dwarf variety to replace it with.

Sweetcorn Extra Tender and Sweet F1

The biggest of my sweetcorn plants in the veg bed is about 3 feet tall now. I've not grown this variety 'Extra Tender and Sweet F1' before so I don't know how tall it will get, or how many cobs I might get per plant, if any, if the weather isn't hot enough. It's all an experiment. But that's what grow your own is to me. I like to try and grow new things. If it's something we like to eat, I'll give it a go. The broad beans, the potatoes in bags, and putting tomatoes in hanging baskets are all new for me this year.

 Elsewhere in the garden, in the Woodland Border, the plants have grown up well and knitted together. The geranium flowers and Heuchera Green Spice with it's crimson veins are adding nice colour. I have got two  clematis in flower on the fence just above these. One is Gypsy Queen, the other is Etoile Violette. Both have had their flowers and leaves nibbled by something. Up close they look a bit tatty. From a distance they look ok. If I get a bit of plant without nibbles I will post a pic. And if I catch what is nibbling them, well..........

There is a newly named bit of garden that I haven't shown you before. It's the bit between my compost bin and the fence, at the bottom of the garden, by the gate. It's the newly named Wild Area. I planted my clematis there thinking the roots would be in shade because the compost bin and as the sun came round the shadow of the bottom fence would take over. Turns out it's actually quite sunny there, hence my clematis went a bit brown and crispy at one stage, before I worked out what was going on. I had chucked some native poppy seed in that area, just on the offchance that it would grow in shade. Now it's got it's perfect climate. Hot sun. So it has grown and is flowering. I bought a Verbena Bonariensis for the bee border, but it was a bit shady where I was planning to put it, so that's been planted there. And my two pink flamingos with their springy heads live in the Wild Area now too. Just goes to show you need to watch your garden for a year to work out sun/shade areas. It's surprising how the high summer sun can reach over fairly tall objects, like my compost bin, and light up a tiny spot. I think I might continue with the Wild theme with some native meadow plants. Maybe an Oxeye daisy. I need to find out how big all these things get.

I've made a montage shot of some of the flowers that are looking good around the garden at the mo.
(Top left) Clematis Warsaw Nike, that's on the fence behind the veg bed, and it's been flowering for months.
(Top right) Gaillardia Fanfare, I really like unusual flowers, and bright flowers, this one fits both criteria. The outside trumpet flowers make the 'petals' of the larger flower shape.
(Bottom left) One of my pots of Calendula Art Shades, a 59p pack of seeds from the supermarket and you get a pot of colour all summer, as long as you keep up with the deadheading
(Bottom right) Part of the bee border plants, I really like this combination, tall blue spires of Veronica Royal Candles, with the crimson scabious type flowers of Knautia Macedonia, and the deep orange single flowers of Geum Borisii.

I have some wildlife in the wildlife pond. I have had 'wildlife' for a while in the form of mosquito larvae, bloodworms, and daphnia, who have all done sterling work and the pond water is clear as crystal at the moment. But the other day I was walking by and saw this snail browing along just under the water line. Turns out it's a Great Pond Snail. That's not just what I think it is because it's my first 'proper' wildlife to turn up in the pond, it's really called that. Lymnaea stagnalis, to give it it's proper title. I named it Cyril. But now I've looked into it a bit more, with the help of the lovely lot over on the Wild About Britain forum, it could be a Cybil. Or both! I am expecting lots of little Cybils and Cyrils to appear in due course. The pond has been in since last September, so if you take out the cold winter months, when the sun isn't on the pond at all, which is end of October to start of March, it's taken four months for this wildlife to create a nice mini eco-system that keeps the pond clear. It's amazing how it all arrives on it's own. How does it know there's a pond here? I guess it hitches a ride on a bird's legs, or beak, when they take a drink in other ponds.

Anyway, as I have been a bit slack in the garden updates, this is what you get, an overload of update. If you read the last blog, you'd have read that I was about to sow my lawn seed. I did. And I now have the 'lower lawn' area that I had on my original garden plan. The June shower/sun weather was perfect for it, and it's a sight of lush green at the moment. So, I thought I'd stick together a pic of where the garden started, before I got my hands on it, and where we are now, complete with new bit of lawn -

The garden at the start - now

I've still got to sort out the container patio area, the Moroccan courtyard, the bee border, and finish off the woodland border too. Those are for another blogging day.