Months have yet again gone past without a post! In my defence I spent March in Australia for my little sisters wedding and then packing up and shipping the rest of stuff that we had in storage – it was a frantic, busy trip. When I got home it was straight into mad gardening season including playing catch up with all the seeds that should have gone in or got started in March!

We had wonderful peas but they all got wiped out a couple of weeks ago when we had a heatwave come through:

I’ve also extended my growing area into the space under the hoop house, a new round garden, a potato bed and a soft fruit bed. I’m growing butternuts, decorative gourds and baby watermelons on the edges of the hoop house and will train them up over the hoops. Tomatoes run down the centre with ropes hanging down to support them, I’m hoping it works really well, we are also going to install a drip system to help with the huge watering job.

We have so much in: beans, melons, tomatoes, 19 strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, 3 types of basil, courgette (zucchini) – both normal green ones and a climbing yellow variety, potatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflowers, kale, rainbow swiss chard, lettuce, carrots, radishes. Lots of companion plants in too – nasturtiums, calundula, marigolds and borage. The grapes look amazing this year and the plums, peaches, apples, walnuts, hazelnuts and figs seem to be no worse for wear even though we had a late frost that sent a lot of the new budding leaves black.

I’ll get some up to date pics shortly!

The garden is coming along really well and we’ve had lots of rain through the early part of June followed by some heat so everything is growing nicely!

Early June saw a big push to get  filled all places in the EL veggie patch (get it – shaped like an E then an L – ha ha) we now have 3 corguettes, 2 chillis, 2 cucumbers, 14 tomatoes, 1 cherry tomato, various lettuces, carrots (well about 6 of them), radishes, peas, snow peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, 100 onions, shallots, dead garlic (have given up all hope – accidentally dug one up and it was rotten ), strawberries and raspberries. Not a great pic in the harsh afternoon light but you get the idea.

The hubby rotovated a further 2.5 x 10 metre bit on the next terrace up – the back is going to be a pumpkin patch (2 large unknown variety, 4 small unknown (Aussie variety I got from organic farmer and kept seeds) and as many butternut as I can fit. I got the 2 big ones in up the back – I thought I read do an 18 inch hill so made it big t (not 18 but pretty big) then read somewhere else 3 inches

The front section is 2 beds a metre wide each and 4 m long with a path – OK it is a trench – didn’t mean to do it that deep but after I’d made my last paths I’d read you should put the soil from the paths you make onto the beds – I perhaps overdid it. Louis commented it looks like WW1!

Plan to cardboard the bottom of the path for weeds then probably just put some straw for the moment and get something on the sides to hold back the soil and in effect make raised beds! Plan to have lots of basil and beans in this section.

By the end of the month this is how it was looking:

The zucchinis (courgettes) are growing really well, already had 6 lovely ones from one plant. I think I need to be a bit more careful with my watering in the heat though as there have been a few little ones that have kind of shriveled up, turned brown and died (unless there is some other unknown thing going on and if so please tell me!).

The pumpkin patch (need to sort out the weeds – I regret not mulching straight away, it makes the most enormous difference!).

The other end has the beans which are coming u nicely – they are so big no in comparison – amazing how much growth happens in just 10 days!

So we are eating lots of yummy fresh produce – mainly lettuce, radishes, courgettes, peas and the odd strawberry and some gooseberries.

Looking forward to tasting the rest!

Back in early March I started my plans and work on the veggie garden. The original plan I was working to looked like this:

Louis and I spent ages measuring and laying it all out:

In the end hubby explained that it wouldn’t work to try to get all the little paths with the rotovator so we ended up just rotovating the whole thing and then I formed my paths later. The end result was a bit different from my drawing – it is basically a ‘L’ then a ‘E’. The paths are a bit messy looking but I need to re-cardboard them and I have just bought some wood chips to put on them so that should look much better!

By early May it was looking like this – lots of seeds in and small plants but not an awful lot to see!

Peas and snow peas (mangetoute) running the 2 lines under the teeppee thing (obviously not needed yet for growth but I’m needing to build all sorts of Rémy barriers) and the shallots / eshallots doing really well next to them.

By mid-May more wsa starting to grow and I kept on with my plantings:

The lettuce patch – the ones at the back are still my winter ones I planted in October then cos at the front:

This first section has radish and carrots to the right then the non growing garlic through the centre then on the left is some more peas (need to put up a support). The top left is a small cherry tomato, some peppers, aubergine and perhaps something else that I can’t remember then heading off along the top row is all the tomatoes with a row of basil right a long the top edge:

The pea house and I’ve done a little bed on the end with some nasturtiums (must get some on the other ends as well):

The brassica area, I’ve got 6 cauliflowers at the front then some brussel sprouts,there is now also 6 broccolis in as well then along the top edge are 3 zuchinnis and there should have been a cucumber as well but I killed it (decapitated it as I picked it up  ). Then on the right hand of the L bit there are 6 strawberries and 2 raspberries (I haven’t managed to move them and decided I’ll leave them this year, I think I could cause more damage than good to move them now):

Looking down the long edge of the ‘E’ where I have the tomatoes and a few lettuce in the centre (trying inter planting)

We had a very wet spring so everything has grown really well – I’m so impressed with my first effort! I’m actually amazed looking back at these pics just how far it has come along!

50 gorgeous pink Lautrec garlic cloves ready to go in the ground!

I was absolutely thrilled to discover I could plant garlic in the spring. Apparently yields are slightly less than for autumn planted garlic but who cares – I get to grow garlic! This variety have a lovely flavour and nice big plump bulbs, they are quite expensive in the shop too so well worth growing, fingers crossed they do grow for me. I can’t wait to see how they go, I’ll definitely update!