Early May

Thought it was about time I updated for May these are all from the beginning of the month as I've yet to upload the photos for the past week. This year we made a small raised bed for L to plant up. I gave her some seeds that I knew would come up quickly - cress, radish, carrot, marigolds & dwarf sunflowers. As you can see the radishes popped up within 5 days, L was rather pleased with this!

We found a slo worm in the compost heap, surprisingly hard to photograph this was the best of 10 shots.

Just about empty plot at the beginning of May.

Inside the shed cucumbers, courgettes, pattypans, butternut squash, pumpkin and a messy floor.

Runner beans coming along very quickly.

Bedtime reading, I'm loving Paul Merrett's book added bonus is that half the book is recipes for using your produce.

Now onto the 15 May strawberries, rhubarb, peas & broad beans growing. Sweet pea wigwams in place.

In the greenhouse shed everything is shooting up sweetcorn,

cucumbers, courgettes & pumpkins.

Pattypans & butternut squashes.

chillies have now been potted on to slightly larger pots.

Pak choi didn't have any luck with this last year, I think I was a bit late planting.

Garlic has now come up.

Potatoes peeping though earthed these up quickly because of the frosts.

And this is a tray of compost that my wormery worms made for me, I'm hoping my chillies & peppers will do well in this.

In the past couple of weeks everything has gone haywire because it has been so hot I'll update soon.

Things are gradually coming to life

In less than a week everything seems to be springing into life probably because the weather has been amazing here for the past couple of weeks. It won't be long and we'll be tucking into a rhubarb crumble. It's the second year for the 2 rhubarb plants so we'll be able to eat some this year. Just in case the slugs also start munching we've been making copper wire circles to put around some of the plants.

This is our homemade shed, which also passes as a greenhouse it has certainly helped with the seed growing. I sowed some of the seeds here and the rest at home. At home I've been taking them outside in the daytime and bringing them in at night as we are still getting quite heavy frosts most mornings.

Yesterday I potted on 30 tomato plants, 24 Pak Choi, 29 sweetcorn and 25 courgettes. It's hard to tell the sizes of the plants in the photos as they look smaller than what they are.

Here's some before(5 days ago) and after( yesterday) pictures.

Courgettes

Sweetcorn

Tomatoes

Broccoli and French beans

Runner beans

and my cucumbers that are in the shed 7 days from when I planted the seed.

In the meantime my OH has been coming home from work and spending his evenings making a chicken house, which hopefully will be finished this weekend. He has to make a door and a ramp put some waterproof black roofing stuff on and stain it a cornflower blue. I have asked that he cuts a heart window/vent in the side but we shall see, he didn't say no :) The chickens will be living at home as I now have the space where my vegetable patch used to be.

Here we go again!

We've started getting the allotment ready for this year by digging in lots & lots of bags of horse manure and some of sand. We're also widening the beds by about 2ft as we realised we didn't need so much path. Some hens have been moved alongside our patch, which is very relaxing listening to them as you work.

We've put in a raised bed, which L painted, not bad for a 3 yr old! In here I planted carrots & parsnips with 5 types of lettuce & rocket in between the rows.

The potatoes will go in here, hopefully at the weekend.

The peas and broad beans are now in situ. I have to grow them at home because of mice but find that they don't touch them once they are seedlings, I do put plenty of bramble branches all around for added measure. We also have to scatter windmills and anything else that flaps in the wind about as there is a resident pheasant who will pull all of the young plants out.

Other than that I've planted beetroot, shallots and another 16 strawberry plants, the red onions are coming along nicely and both of the rhubarb plants are growing as this is the second year for them we'll be able to eat it, yum! At home I've been busy planting all the seeds about 30 varieties so there are seed trays everywhere. When we made the shed last year we used very thick clear corrugated plastic for the top half and roof so this year I'm going to put some cucumber, tomato and chilli plants in there and see what happens.

Still here!

We're still here beavering away, so much to do I haven't updated for 6 weeks or so. Her's a quick update of the past few weeks.

I was delighted to find baby cauliflowers this week, they are tiny probably not much bigger than a golf ball.

Amazingly these peppers are just growing now, I think it's because of the lovely sunshine that we have had for the past few weeks.

We also have a couple of squash, I'm hoping that they'll continue to grow.

and more marrows, luckily my family are loving stuffed marrow:)

Lily had another sunflower, a bit bigger this time.

I've also done a lot of weeding

and found some creepy crawlies, this one was on an aubergine plant, it's a flower crab spider, which changes colour to blend in with the background. I assume this one had just come off the gherkin flowers.

Butterflies that left some

not so welcome visitors

We've harvested quite a few things lots of sweet peas.

yummy sweetcorn

There's still plenty growing turnips, swedes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, leeks, cabbage, cauliflowers, sprouts, broccolli, chard, pak choi, kale, courgettes and squash. I've planted potatoes that should be ready for Christmas and I have red onions and garlic to go in this week.