Over wintered broad beans, we have been giving them away, we have so many and the freezer just cannot cope. It was good that these finally came to an end, helped a lot by the cold, windy and rainy weather. It was also good as I needed the space, as soon as I cleared the beans I put in rainbow chard plants. I had these in the garden last year and was a bit disappointed that I grew so little, and they were all green plants. I’ve done a lot more this year and can already see the yellow and red plants.

The garlic came out last week and is still drying in the mini greenhouse. This left a gap inbetween the carrots, and even more so since I thinned them out. I’ve had some beetroot plants in an old cardboard eggbox growing for ages, we don’t need any more beetroot (the garden is full of it) but it was a good gap filler, along with some marigolds.

It’s going to rain (forever) for the next week so it seemed a good time to plant out the remaining things I have in pots. this included a number of left over squash plants that may or may not do anything, but they might as well have a go. Three of them in the garden and a couple at the plot. I also had some celeriac plants still in pots and so added them to the ones I put out last week.

A couple of days ago I picked our first lot of raspberries for the year, just a handful – today there were loads. I also picked a lot of strawberries, still not millions of them but still better than last year. Last week I had found a dead mouse in the strawberry bed surrounded by strawberries it looked like he had collected up to eat. Today, when I moved a bit of wood, I found a whole cache of strawberries, it seems he had been helping himself to quite a bit.

One time when we walked up to the plot we found a bird in the fruit cage, it had got through the anti-bird netting. I thought it was a one off and it did seem to be for a number of weeks. This week I noticed a bit of damage to the bushes and some berries on the ground, all signs of birds. A bit annoying that the anti-bird netting doesn’t seem as affective as it could be (it’s an improvement) and so I put over some scaffold netting over the top. I didn’t really want to as I never like the look of it, but there are so many berries that will be read for picking in a couple of weeks, I don’t want to loose them.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•