Greenfly are swarming

Today the sun is shining. Which is slightly surprising given yesterday's freezing and very very wet weather. So I have taken the opportunity to plant a few Nasturtium seeds in my Alpine Strawberry trough.

It's the one at the end on the right

Protecting your veg patch from predators...

I've just been chatting away on Facebook to a friend about gardens & veg patches: and they got me thinking about how to protect your food from the depredations of nature....

In London, I used the Square Foot Gardening technique (well a form of it) promoted by Mel Bartholomew here using a flat pack one square metre plastic square from the Organic Gardening Catalogue guys here and some of their yellow bag vegetable planters here and their green bag potato planters here

From the right: potato planters with potatos, beans and cauliflower, then yellow veg planters with cabbage, aubergine & peppers and various herbs, then to the left, surrounded by rampant nasturtiums and unmown grass, the plastic square. This was divided into 9 plots using 6 garden canes crossed & tied with string: in here were onions, broccoli, tomato, mizuna, rocket, land cress, lettuce, cauliflower and pack choi. Though as you can see here, the brassicas have taken over by June 2009 when this was taken! You can get a lot of crops into a small space if you think it out first - and know which way the sun goes during the day and also know how big this stuff grows to! (as you can see, I got that a bit wrong in 2009!

Strawberry glut? what strawberry glut? where are my strawberries!

Following on from the jam making session of Wednesday, I thought hmmm lots of strawberries getting beautifully ripe, I'll pick them on Thursday and make jam with them on Friday before I head off to Lincolnshire for the weekend (yes again, but this time no house refurbishments on the agenda) and the RAF Waddington Air Show.

Three FoxCubs at Dusk

 

Cherry Blossom

Garden & Veg Patch 1

The veg patch has run to flower and to seed! You can't see much past the broccoli, but the onions and land cress are doing fine underneath and the tomatoes are doing well at the back, as are the herbs and courgette/pepper aubergine in the plastic planters. I forgot to harvest the broccoli and the warm & wet has sent them to seed, which is ok as I've already had quite a lot of broccoli and it gives something for the insects to eat.

Not in the picture is the peas I've not chopped down yet and the brussels sprouts/ cauliflowers that are most unhappy. The pototoes are flowering and look like they're doing fine though.

It's getting a bit difficult to get off the patio since the Evening Primroses grew in the cracks where it joins with the path, and you can't even see the bird table at the end, although Ivor's enjoying it being so overgrown. He's enjoying persecuting the rat & mouse population, although I'd enjoy it more if he kept it strictly al fresco. I've got a lot of spider & vermin catching pots all over the place...

Then when you do make it half way down the garden to the bird table to the path (yes I know, what path! it runs to the right of the table down the middle of the pic towards the little red flowers) you can't actually make it through to the next section due to overgrowth. Which is tricky because there's a compost bin on the other side of that overgrowth and I'd like to be able to use it as well as the one on the patio!

So my next garden task is to work my way from the patio on both sides weeding out bindweed, 6foot nettles and dockleaves (in that order!) as well as the anchusa & other weeds, and then weed out/ tie back stuff so I can get down there. Once on the other side, it should be easier as there's a bark chipping path on each side of the bamboo to the pond, but then it gets truly jungly until you hit the pruning mound.

One of these days, I will hire a chipping machine, reduce the pruning mound (which is approaching the size of a small iron age burial barrow) and use the chippings to remake the circle for having a 4person table down there - but not until I've hacked my way through the undergrowth!

I also want to cut down a shrub that's reaching half way up the chapel wall and suckering all over the place and clean out the pond as it's a bit stagnant and then put a solar powered fountain in there to keep it a bit fresher. You can't really tell it's a pond at present (even if you could machete your way in there) as the flag iris and calla lillies have taken over. I would have done pictures, as it's very pretty if jungly, but I couldn't get in there to take them!