Rain – Sun – Fruit

A lot of rain, a lot of sun, meaning a lot of growing has been happening, in particular the fruit bushes. Firstly though, the garden bed is completely full and every inch is now covered with a plant of some sort. This won’t last for long as the first lot of potatoes have died back and we will start digging them up.

Potatoes at the plot are dieing back too and really need to dug up. These are “pre COVID19” potatoes on the plot, and “post COVID19 lockdown” ones at home, just a couple of weeks later. The other potatoes at home at some left over from forgotten about and so are about a month later than the others, they are growing very well and massive. Hopefully the potatoes underground are just as impressive.

Impressive too are the deep purple flowers on some of the french beans. The beans themselves are purple too, once they have grown. A quick look today and there seems to be a lot of very very tiny beans starting to grow. Last year they were going well until we had some rather cold and windy weather which seemed to kill them off. Protected a bit more in the garden from the wind, I hope we have better luck this year.

Mostly we have been watering and picking fruit. I was interested to see the fennel we planted out last week had survived the hot weather which means I’ll plant some more out this week too.

The raspberry canes have been under threat of me pulling them all up and replanting, but they surprised me on an evening visit this week with millions of (mostly small) fruits which took for ages to pick. Suddenly we have picked a lot, which means the raspberries do stay for another year.

Since cutting down some of the large branches that over shadowed the strawberries, we were able to pick a small number this week. Nothing like the massive ones we had last year, but not a total loss either. I hope for more healthier plants next year.

We had an evening watering and another evening picking some of the first red and black currants. They probably need one or two weeks more, at which point there will be loads to pick, if the netting keeps the birds off still. We even have some black currants in the garden on the bush that we have yet to fully plant. We got this three years ago prior to getting the allotment and it was not meant to stay, but it did and it seems happy.

Netting has not helped the gooseberries. The netting was not put on that well and the birds knew it.

We planted out a cucumber that was still in a pot at home, to join the others we planted out last week. During an evening visit we made the small supports for the cucumbers to climb up and by the end of the week they had got the idea.

Back to the garden and birds have been nibbling on the pea leaves and making a bit of a mess. We covered them over with netting which has stopped them, handy the pea plants are just out in the garden for us to notice. It meant we were able to pick our first lot of peas too.

Harvesting:

  • radish
  • lettuce
  • broad beans
  • currants
  • strawberries
  • peas

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