Fruit Update

We will be enjoying these very much after the soft-fruit heartache during the recent wet weather.

Progress!!!

I finally got some quality time down the lottie yesterday afternoon! I managed to clear up a couple of problematic areas as well as doing some general weeding and tidying into the bargain. Anyone reading my Nature Diary will be interested to learn there were Asparagus Beetles and what I presumed were their larvae (on the asparagus).

This looks better!

Now to make a start on the bold 'get rid of the raised beds and see how it goes' area.

Not bad either. Here's hoping for some more decent weather and the time to take advantage of it before we go away on Wedneday and it all goes to pot.

4 Pics

The courgette plants are enormous and have produced marrows since I last looked...must be all the rain. I hope they don't stop producing courgettes now.

The Purple Sprouting & black kale plants seem to be doing ok...

The beans are battered but still clinging to the string (mostly).

And this area needs a weed pretty quickly! Still it doesn't have to be ready for the new (to me) greenhouse 'til Sept/Oct time.

Hedge Update

Sue did a brilliant job on the hedge this evening...here it is just as she was starting...

...and here it is nearly finished...

...course it isn't easy getting the perfect finish...

...you have to be prepared to stretch a bit!!! Well done Sue.

Sweetcorn Update

Here are the sweetcorn ready to go in...

First I took off the groundcover...

...then I dug over the bed and sprinkled it with chicken manure pellets...

...then I planted the sweetcorn through the holes...here's hoping for an Indian Summer!

...and finally

Sue took the chance to pick a bowl of strawberries before we went home...

...Cora kept an eye open for the frog that lives in the strawberry bed...

...and I cut down the potato haulm in readiness for digging them later (these are first earlies).

'Usual' view +

Here is the 'usual' view as of yesterday...oh dear oh dear oh dear. ..etc etc

My priority now is to get these sweetcorn in to give them any chance at all. The variety is 'Indian Summer' and we will need one of those if they are to produce a good crop! They are absolutely beautiful when mature as you can see from last year's pics here.

Sadly I prioritised getting the tomatoes out just a bit too soon as the weather turned almost immediately and they died (as Big Dave three plots down informed me rather cheerfully I felt) of wind burn. He asked just one killer question worthy of Poirot at his withering best - "Straight out of the greenhouse into the ground?" "Well I opened the door a bit first." was obviously even to me an admission of guilt. So that's why we're supposed to harden things off....

Courgettes & Onions

The courgette plants are looking a little battered by the wind but have not succumbed and are still producing courgettes.

The onions I put out to dry on the guinea-pig run a week or two ago seem to have survived the deluge on account of the chicken wire (yes Alex Mitchell of The Sunday Telegraph I still feel chicken wire is worthy of mention) I rested them upon.

Gooseberries...

...or as Big Dave McMonies might say with a big dreamy grin on his face and a faraway look in his eye - "Goosegogs"! My prediction of all the fruit being past it was thankfully groundless. Some had gone past and fallen off and some were squidgy (I sucked the insides out of those) but most seemed ok. It's not a bumper year but we're not complaining either. The bush seems to be falling to pieces from a rotten stem though so it might be time to have a look at varieties with a view to replacing it.

Sorting Out

The strawberry bed (above - how did that thistle get that big???) and the first two shameful areas below need sorting out...

This is where the greenhouse is going once Ivan releases it.

Maybe I will just dig this over and not have beds here. Radical eh;-)

...but at least I made a start on the 'lawn' yesterday. (I actually dug the thistles out of the strawberry bed before I left as well.)

Wet Wet Wet

It is very wet at the moment. I called in on the way home from Lisa's guitar lesson on Monday and watered the Cosmos in the greenhouse. There are weeds everywhere the tomatoes are dying there aren't any pumpkins sown the Jerusalem Artichokes are all over the place the peas didn't make it past the 2 inch pots the soft fruit is slowly deteriorating the hedge is very tall the lawn is overgrown and....apart from that everythings fine....:-)