Pea shooter

Baby Wild loves the peas growing in the garden so much, she calls them "sweeties"!  Every time she sets foot outdoors she makes a break for them screaming for help to pop open the pods she tears from the bush.  I am proud that at such a young age she appreciates the value of growing our own and understands where some veggies come from.......

But she's destroyed one of the bushes!  It's collapsed altogether into a big tangled heap from being pulled at so enthusiastically.  Oh dear.

Garden progress - August

 

 My garden has really come into itself this month.  Most flowers are in full bloom, making me realise that I need to do some research into what I can grow to fill the gap between my spring bulbs and mid summer when my garden was so bare!  All my herbs are in bloom too, making the front garden gloriously fragranced.

 It's also a little wild though!  I am regretting growing so many nasturtiums.  They are drowning out my opium poppies which have decided to flower for a second time this summer, as well as the more delicate but no less prolific Californian poppies.

The veg patch is doing a great job of keeping the food bills down (and we all need that right now!!) as we have been living off salads and snacking on the peas on mangetout, which are still fruiting happily.  I'm still throwing bags of lettuce over the fence to neighbours, and made a huge batch of lovely lettuce, apple mint and pea soup to deal with the remaining surplus.  I've also been experimenting with thinnings, as I'm so reluctant to throw any thinned seedlings away I've been replanting them elsewhere and giving them to friends.  We've decided that salisfy does not appreciate being moved, so in future the weaker seedlings shall be resigned to the compost heap.

I have new seedlings sprouting up to see how they fare being sown mid summer.  To be honest I also wanted to use up some of the packets of seeds.  That's another lesson learnt this year - stop buying so many seeds!

The flowers a the end of the patch in this photo are the radishes that I let go to seed.  I remember Alys Fowler doing this in her programme The Edible Garden, recommending that they go rather well with beer, sounds good to me!

You can just see two scrawny courgette plants at the bottom of this photo - I managed to rescue these after being almost decimated by slugs a few months ago.  One of them is thanking me by starting to fruit at last!

The asparagus pea plants are still tiny, and took an age to germinate but what pretty flowers!  I'm really looking forward to tasting these.  It has been hard work keeping the slugs away from these guys and munching on my beautiful curly lettuces edging the pot.  The effect is somewhat ruined by the smattering of bright blue slug pellets I ended up having to buy in bulk.

I've started planning a winter veg patch too... but we'll go into that at a later date.  Right now I need to go pull up some greedy nasturtiums!

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.

Sow a lot, reap a little?

A thought occurred to me today - maybe having the slowest growing garden in the west of Scotland is a good thing? Whilst all the neighbouring gardens around me start to fade, mine is only just beginning!
Finally, the poppys I sowed at the end of spring are starting to grow, and those I cheated and bought are actually in bloom! My peonies have grown, but I suspect have no intention to flower this year what so ever. Gutted. However the climbing rose is in it's element and has lots of little buds, the curry plant is threatening to stink out the entire street, and the herbs are running riot.

Ever the impatient gardener however, I spent this afternoon making yet more sowings. Flower-wise, I sowed Blue Mink Ageratum, yet MORE Californian Poppies, yet MORE Cornflowers, and Cosmos amongst the front beds. I live in hope that at least some will germinate & grow. I also sowed some Honesty in a corner to contrast with the Golden Fennel. In theory this should bloom summer 2012.

Amongst the still-too-bare-for-my-liking front garden, I stuck in some more Rhubarb Chard, a small Brussels Sprout 'Petit Posy' starting bed; and surrounded the daisy patch with Dwarf French Beans as I expect their red flowers to look well amongst the giant daisies.

Daddy Native is most perplexed by the Asparagus Peas I sowed in a planter out the back, having run out of veg patch space for legumes. I can't wait to get round to harvesting and trying those out!

And finally I filled in the last remaining spaces in the veg patch with 2 rows each of Salsify & Rudolf Broccoli! Phew.

I'm not finished there either, indoors I sowed seed trays with a whole batch of new herbs, both for my own herb garden as well as gifts for new homes I'll be visiting next month. Am most excited to see how the Cumin does.

SO here's my entire crop this year.... get ready... take a deep breath.....

Peas, Runner Beans, Mangetout, 3 different types of Dwarf/French Beans, 1 Artichoke, 2 beds of various Radishes, Broccoli, Salsify, Swiss Chard, Rhubarb Chard, Spinach, Carrots, Beetroot, Celeriac, Pumpkins, Courgette, Gourds, Cherry Tomatoes, Gardeners Delight Tomatoes, Chilli Peppers, Cucumbers, Aubergine, Rocket, Asparagus Peas, Brussels Sprouts, Fennel, Strawberries, White Currants, endless varieties of lettuces and a whole host of herbs...

Should find something to eat out of that lot, what do you think?

Toilet Roll Carrots

Step one - save a pile of empty loo rolls & stick them in the ground

Fill with lovely soft seed compost & slow release food

Pop in some carrot seedlings & water

This is my approach to getting carrots to grow a proper root this year - no more little orange stumps for me.... if my plan works! ha ha