So far this year has been a bit of a battle garden wise. Last month we were gardening - or should I say trying to garden - in mud and wishing that the ground would dry out so the beds could be prepared for this year's crops.
I guess we should be careful what we wish for as the change of weather in May not only dried the soil but baked it hard. Some beds were prepared during the brief period when the ground was workable but now it is proving almost impossible.
Martyn has managed to knock some beds into shape but it is taking a long time and is very hard going. We took all the weed control fabric off the beds to allow some drying to take place - now we wonder whether that was a mistake.
On top of all this last week a frost was forecast for a couple of nights so we took a couple of precautions. Strawberry plants that were in flower we covered with fleece, potatoes growing without weed control fabric were earthed up and those growing through fabric were covered with wood chippings. The temperatures briefly dropped to 2.2C (36F). We thought we had escaped any damage but the potatoes grew through their covering and some seem to have been nipped a little. We are unsure of whether the problem is frost damage or the result of excessive dryness.
We have given them plenty of water just in case. In fact we spent much of Sunday watering and now have arms a foot or so longer due to lugging heavy watering cans about.
Most of the fruit like the greengages, plums and blueberries have set lots of fruit and have obviously enjoyed the conditions.
At least one gooseberry though hasn't fared too well. The problem is that despite pruning to create an open bush, the bushes on the fruit beds have produced an excessive amount of growth and the gooseberry being low growing is suffering from lack of air flow. Every berry on one bush was badly mildewed. I have removed all the fruit to try and cut down the spread but it looks like we could be gooseberriless this year. It's a shame as the bush was loaded. We'll just have to hope other gooseberry bushes are unaffected
The carrots and parsnips are germinating fairly well but in need of constant watering as are all the seedlings. I just hope that the slugs and snails keep their distance. Must admit that, this year, the parsnips seem to have started germinating faster than I expected.
The first lot of peas had grown enough to need supports and we have sown another two rows of peas and a couple of rows of mangetout and sugarsnap peas. The circles shown in the photo above right are sown with beetroot and chard.
The first lot of sweet peas have now been planted and the rest are waiting for a bed to be ready for them.
Back at home the watercress is now flowering profusely. Reading up on this it seems that the leaves become bitter after the plant flowers. Can anyone confirm this. If this is the case I suppose it will have to come out and more started.
All our rhubarb has grown well this year and some clumps are now sending up more unwelcome flowers. These have been removed.
Flowers or not we still have plenty of stems to harvest
Just one of the stems above were used in the batch of Rhubarb Crumble Muffins that I made this week. Some of the rest was stewed to add to our morning porridge.
This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on
Dave's blog Our Happy Acres
