June in the garden…

Well being away for the last week of May/first week of June was always going to be “interesting” - that we knew. My lovely Mum popped in a few times and watered as needed - which thanks to some rather unseasonal weather, wasn’t as often as we suspected might be needed. And of course more rain than expected also meant that everything GREW - we came back to a main veg bed that looked like this…

Plus a lot of weeds everywhere and a patch of lawn that appeared to have decided it was a very small meadow…! 

In terms of  “damage”, sadly our entire planting of Broad beans had succumbed to blackfly. Not a particular surprise - there were signs on a few plants before we went away, and quite honestly we should have been tougher on that when we first saw it, so a learning curve there. We finally gave in and pulled the plants in fact, as we clearly weren’t going to get anything edible from them. The Pak Choi - just tiny little baby plants when we left - had clearly been delighted at being planted into the main bed as that had bolted as you can see from the picture. Some of the leaves are still useable, but obviously it’s not quite what I’d intended from it! Other than that, the only casualties were the runner and bush beans we had sown before heading off - whether they never germinated, or just got eaten as soon as they did, we have no idea, but apart from one single lonely seedling, there were no sign of those. More bush beams were sown immediately, and we bought runner bean plants which are already going well.

From as soon as we were back we were able to start harvesting salad leaves, the first few radishes and some little baby carrots too. A few Pak Choi leaves went into a stir fry, but our first notable harvest came in the form of the first courgette on the 19th - and very tasty it was too! 

We’ve had a couple more since, and with plenty more on the plants we are hopeful for them forming a solid part of our eating for a while yet. 

The cooler weather through May and into the early part of June has unquestionably held everything back which is annoying. I’m still needing to buy herbs as needed, although mine are starting to grow with a bit more enthusiasm it’s not what I had hoped for really. I think parsley and coriander may well be on the list of things to buy from the nursery next year, just to get an earlier start on things. We are still harvesting lettuce leaves but there will be a gap before the next lot of cut and come again is ready. Cucumbers are setting on both our surviving plants - two more have been sown and should be ready to plant out soon, but whether those will catch up remains to be seen. 

In terms of the floral side of things, next door’s honeysuckle which has happily grown through our fence is now flowering and looking fantastic…

Proving very popular with the bees too - there was one cheerfully buzzing around as I took that picture in fact - you can see him at the bottom of the shot! Our sunflowers have been growing furiously too and are now just beginning to burst into full flower - look…

Just how cheerful is that? Definitely something we would always make a point of growing now I think - they proved remarkably trouble free from the start, germination rate was high (6/6 germinated, but one got eaten just as soon as they were planted out - we would be faster with the slug protection in future) and although we did stake them due to some very high winds bending them right over, I’m not convinced they’d need it in usual circumstances. Above all though they are a great bit of fun with their big happy bright yellow flower heads! 

So there you have it - the main veg bed now looks like this:

As you can see the potatoes look to be trying to take over the world, there! Our tomato plants are also finally growing - and flowering - as we would hope…

That’s the standard plants - we also have an area of more compact bush plants at the bottom of the garden which are starting to produce fruit. All being well by the time I post the July in the Garden post we ought to be self-sufficient in toms, at least! 

Robyn.