Windy!!

Today is very windy and I had to tie the little greenhouse down - remember what happened to the last one?


We have had a bit of a mixture of sunshine and rain - perfect growing conditions, trouble is that the weeds and the grass like it too and we are having a job keeping on top of both.

The week has been pretty good veg wise. I have started to harvest the early potatoes: Rosabelle. I say earlies but I can't be sure, they are huge and look more like maincrop to me. I am not too bothered though because I won't be growing them again, they are very nice looking and big enough for jacket potatoes but they are very floury and don't have much flavour. They look pretty good for all that though.


We have had a few peas but I didn't manage to get to the kitchen before they podded themselves and jumped into my mouth. I also planted the mangetout peas and we will wait to see how they get on. My peppers were looking a bit sad in the greenhouse and the leaves were all curling up, so I looked on my trusty forum - The Grow your own Grapevine - and it seems that they might have a deficiency of some sort. I planted one and it seems a little better so, as soon as the wind dies down I will plant the rest outside. The chili peppers, however, are fine. I think I will leave them inside in the safety of the greenhouse.

We have started harvesting the soft fruit with a vengeance. Apart from the strawberries, which are slowing down now, we have been picking a lot of gooseberries, black and redcurrants and raspberries. This is just some of the resulting produce.

No, I didn't grow the lemons but I thought it added a bit of colour to the picture. There is still a lot more fruit on the bushes. I think I shall probably harvest and freeze it, and then think of what to do with it during the cold winter months.

The "unknown" tomatoes are starting to flower. I say unknown, because I just kept the seeds from a shop-bought one last year and planted them. Trouble is, as I don't know what variety they are, I don't know how to look after them (I had the same trouble with the kids). I am guessing, but now they are flowering, I feel a bit happier.

Courgettes, yellow, green and round are all doing well and, now I know how to keep the slugs off the tender plants, I have some tomatillos and auberjeans coming on nicely in the greenhouse. One of the melons has a fruit on it and I played pimp and fertilised it with a male flower so I am hopeful that we can manage at least one melon ball starter this year.

The only other thing of note is to give you an updated picture of the front bed: A bit better than than a couple of weeks ago don't you think?

It's all kicking off here

At last...

The sun has arrived and everything seems to be loving it. We have more strawberries than I know what to do with :

I already have a jam making session's worth in the freezer, a couple of frozen desserts and the start of a rum pot well, I say rum it is actually 38% alcohol for fruits and can be bought here for about 10€ per litre so here's hoping it isn't too disgusting.

Remember the pathetic fig tree that I was so excited about last time - well, it took offence and just to prove me wrong went off on one - look at it now - actually this picture is about a week old and it's even bigger than that and growing fast in the sun.

So far (touch wood) the blight has stayed away. I'm being quite vigilant and spraying every couple of weeks with Bordeaux mix and crossing fingers. The grapes are starting to show - let's hope they loose their blue haze when they are ready for winemaking though eh?

I feel like a proper gardener now - walking along the plots, hands behind my back looking lovingly at everything that is growing.

The sweetcorn and broadies are romping away in this sun. I gave them a feed of Phostrogen which they seemed to like and we picked our first broad beans on Monday. Not quite enough to keep a sparrow alive but, hey, this is our first picking.

In the fruit "orchard" the red and black currants are ripening up and nearly ready for harvesting - that is, as long as we can get to them before the birds do. The apples, goosegogs and 2 mirabelles are also doing well so we may yet get a pudding out of them this year. Next year - organic or not, I am going to spray with every pesticide known to man in the hope of getting a little more fruit from the trees.

And lastly, we have been thinking that the outside of the house is a bit flat and boring so with that in mind Keith has kindly made me a frame for a raised bed so that I can have some climbing things in it that will grow up the wall and as soon as Flash heard the word bed he thought, that would be a good idea for a lie down and, as you know, it's best to let sleeping dogs lie :-)

Don' it make my brown eyes (and potatoes) blue

Spotted the first tell tale signs of blight on my potatoes today. The great potato famine that wiped out the entire crop in Ireland was caused by blight and I ain't taking no chances. It is a real bugger, we had it last year, consequently we had hardly any potatoes and NO tomatoes.

I spent a very happy? hour with my sprayer and covered all the at risk plants with Bordeaux mixture - a copper sulphate concoction that is meant to prevent blight if you don't have it and slow the deterioration down if you already have it. It is meant to be organic although some people much cleverer than me don't agree but I think it is better than having no vegies to show for all the hard work. Quite a fetching blue haze now adorns the potatoes, tomatoes and grapevines don't you think?


It's not all bad news though. The forecast is for sun over the next couple of days and the barometer here at home seems to be bearing that out. We need a good bit of sunshine for a couple of days to dry everything out so that we can get to cut the grass which, at the moment is threatening to take over the whole veg patch. I have been planting, potting on and sowing between showers and the greenhouse is choc-a-block with things waiting to go out once the rain stops.

The great success story at the moment is the strawberries - just look at that!


And the fig that I thought had fallen at the first frost last year has started to sprout new growth so, I have been "fussing" over it in the hope that it makes it through the summer so that I can get another chance at over wintering it.

This is it, close up:

And this is it in its pot just to give you some scale:


Huge learning curve, this good life lark!

Rain, rain go away

So... It's raining again here at Beaugut so I have decided that, as I can't get out into my beloved garden, I will write about it instead. This is my my first blog entry on a little bit of Beaugut (which, for the uninitiated, is the name of the five house hamlet where we live).

My blog is mostly going to do with gardening and using the produce in such delights as jam, home made wine and other things designed to convince you that I am a domestic goddess - which, of course, I am not.


This shows where exactly the garden is and if you click on the picture you will go to Google earth (in a new window) and you can look around the area. If you click on any of the other pictures you should see a larger image.

So... the garden here is just about an acre and we have an orchard ...


Well, OK - more like an area of fruit trees and bushes.

We have left an area wild for all the little critters: we have all sorts in here, loads of bird types, crickets, voles, spiders, grass snakes and, well, loads of other things that I shall no doubt be showing you as time goes on.

It doesn't look like much at the moment but we have planted some pretty wild flowers and we have two willow whips that have taken well to the wet area that this is. If you look at the back of the picture there is a sloe bush/tree that gave us the makings of a lovely sloe gin last year.


Then, of course, there's the the veg patch or potager if you want to be posh.


This is the bit furthest away from the house and at the bottom of the slope that is the garden.

Here we have potatoes...


Broad beans...


Sweetcorn ...


and rhubarb


This part is closer to the house and the big open area is earmarked as a brassica patch.

Just to the left of that is the legume plot where I have planted a row of peas, and six French beans - nice wigwam don't you think!


You can also see a block of shallots to the left of the bean wigwam (thanks Wellie) and beyond that again is two rows of potatoes


Brassica plot again on the left and a plot for carrots, parsnips onions and garlic on the right


This picture is looking across all of the plots towards the orchard with a lovely mallow tree in the foreground


I also have a pretty full strawberry plot with some raspberries at the side of it, a bit overgrown at the moment I'm afraid, but I hope to show you some better pictures when I can get around to tidying up a bit.


Just before I finish for today, I must show you my passion fruit, yes, fruit - how exciting!