How June faired....

June faired well, it was a mixed bucket load of weathers, which overall seemed to please the garden.  My moods seemed to match this, swinging from happily pottering and weeding to full on panic gardening and sowing of seeds all over the place scared that I'll never have anything to harvest!

 So there was quite a lot to record here this month, in the hope that eventually I shall make more sense of what works for us and what to leave behind in future.  I'll start with the veggie patch, my favourite piece.  It's really starting to kick off now.  We are eating mangetout daily, the pea pods are huge and starting to swell now. 

 It's a bit mad looking, sure, but I know where everything is, it's not that big after all.  To me I see order, a soft ordered chaos of little future meals all at different stages.  Some things have bolted in the hotter days, but I've decided that's no bad thing - the flowers are wonderful brightening up the back garden. 

I'm probably most excited about how happily the salsify is growing.  The sharp looking spires or bright green contrast nicely against the chaos of the rest of the patch!  Although the broccoli I planted in the rows to the right of the salsify are not fairing so well. I'm not sure whether they are being eaten by beasties or not liking their patch for another reason.  There's a few babies there so I'll keep an eye on what survives and do my best by them and see how it goes.

The long patch has been a battle ground with weeds, but is throwing up lots to eat regularly all the same.  I'm leaving some of the radishes that are growing in between the celeriac to mature and go to seed so that we can eat the seeds later in the year.  Alice Fowler reckons they make a great beer snack - sounds like a plan to me!  And there is a patch of wee beetroots, which I hope to make my chocolate birthday cakes with later in the year.

Things are also looking up in the much less established front garden.  Everything is still quite young and needing another year to properly fill space etc, but I'm slowly starting to understand my soil a bit better I feel.  Although am still at a complete loss as why my best poppies all committed suicide, whilst others grow nearby.  I still worry why the peonies won't flower - too much nitrogen apparently?? It still looks a little granny-ish, but it's a huge improvement from when we moved in!

I've been steadily making regular sowings of rocket, beans, beetroot and salad leaves. It still makes me so

excited to watch them all sprout!

I'm not quite sure about my curly sprouts, and whether we'll have enough for Christmas dinner or not as they too are disappearing mysteriously.  I think I'm gonna need to net the brassicas tomorrow to stop the attacks!

And finally, June ended with a lot of insects.... We've been cursing the midges lots of late, it seems they are LOVING this summer.  They are sure loving me.  I am being eaten alive some days, and am running out of Skin So Soft.  Anyway, that was nothing compared to finding this baby in the shed after a week away in Ireland.....

The white stuff is the remaining wasp & ant powder/poison.  We killed the nest ourselves as I decided I wasn't forking out 50 bangers for the council to come remove it when browsing the Internet would tell me all I needed to instruct Daddy Wild with!

And while it had to go, and was a major pain in the ass, especially keeping Baby Wild indoors until we were sure there were no gangs of seriously pissed off wasps waiting for us out the back, I must admit that there's an odd beauty to it don't you think?  I felt rather mean disposing of such a clever and painstaking creation.