This year is the first 'proper' year of my venture into growing my own vegetables. Until now, my husband has been in charge of this department and is a little .... let's be kind and say... sporadic about his approach to the whole thing. I don't think that gardening is a real passion of his anymore. He used to be into the whole thing but now he seems to need prodding (nagging??) to get anything done. Except for the grass - he is mostly good about keeping on top of the lawn mowing. I only say this so that you don't think I have barged in and taken over the whole project in my usual domineering way.
Weeding is a great hobby for me - I love it. I find it relaxing and soothing to the mind. It seems to give a pleasant time to help untangle the jumble of thoughts in my brain and in between doing that I don't think about very much other than the weeds themselves and getting out every little bit of bind weed root that I can. On the other hand, Dave is good at planting out some things but then he prefers to leave them to their own fate as far as fending off the weeds is concerned. He is good and consistent at watering but weeding is definitely NOT his thing.
I am also such a control freak at times that I do like the vegetables to look neat. They don't have to be in smart rows or anything - as demonstrated by the potato photo below! My only reason for planting anything else in rows from seed is that I need to see what comes up and identify it in it's uniform setting as what I planted, rather than thinking it might be a weed!!
I have started the beans in the propagator as well as the squashes. As you can see from these pics we are in the early stages and not too much progress yet. I have just put some cloches over them to see if a little shelter gives them a fighting chance.Lets just blame the weather at this point for their pathetic-ness! It seems to have rained constantly for the last week and the wind has been rather tempestuous too, resulting in rather forlorn and battered small plants. Never mind, lets see what happens.
The fruit bed is doing very well, although the strawberries are begging for more sun. The blueberries are looking good. I have had the plants for several years but they have been rather neglected in pots. At the end of last year I planted them in the ground with some ericaceous compost, and they seem to be responding well to the love and attention. The autumn raspberries are coming up well as are the blackcurrant cuttings taken last year and planted as bare sticks straight into the soil. The goji berries are looking busy but I don't think have ever produced a fruit so I am not holding out much hope for them. The loganberry and the thornless blackberry have both survived the move into the new bed and are looking healthy. Hopefully they will cover up prison fencing over the summer so that it doesn't look quite as cage like!
The fencing has a cat gap cut into it so that the cats have a quick way through. At the moment the cats are spending a lot of time in the polytunnel where it is warm and dry, or the greenhouse. I have lost the battle against the bindweed in the greenhouse at the moment, it is a bit of a disaster area.... watch this space, it is on my list!
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