Saturday, June 07, 2008

Garden update, day...er... I've lost count of what day it is

Had a nice day today, spent the afternoon in Weston Park in Sheffield with some choir people having a picnic and playing frisbee and enjoying the sun.

We took Summer, and she enjoyed meeting Pete's dog Fitz again (they met carol singing last year, although neither of them sang for some reason). Bless.

Have some garden pics. Excuse the poor quality, I used my phone - you get the idea though.

The greenhouse, which currently contains squash/courgettes (which need to go outside), tomatoes, peppers, chillies, melons and cucumbers. And spiders.

Potatoes, with sunflowers visible to the right. Completely recovered from the frost, just a few slightly browned leaves.

Carrots, beetroot, sweetcorn, salsify, spring onions, fennel, edible wild plant mix (yum), cucumber. Some lettuces and salad mix on the right.

Salad mixes, currently occupying the spaces allocated to tomatoes (in the greenhouse at the moment). The spirally poles will support the tomatoes. Not visible is the new asparagus I sowed, because it hasn't germinated yet. Fingers crossed for it.

Nasturtiums (for leaves and flowers for salads, to attract beneficial insects, and for butterflies to lay eggs on so they leave my brassicas alone), purple sprouting broccoli, red cabbage, romanesco cauliflower, calabrese, squash/courgettes.

Peas, which I think are beautiful. Just visible in front are dwarf French beans, and not at all visible behind are more dwarf beans, pole beans, pumpkins, buttercup squash and melons.

Onions, rainbow chard, garlic, spinach. Not visible is the quinoa behind the chard. You can just make out the new salad leaves seedlings top right.

We've already eaten loads and loads of helpings of salad leaves (3 different mixes), cut-and-come-again lettuce, chard, leaf beet and edible wild plants (dandelions are rather good, I have to say). I'm almost sick of leaf salad! We haven't bought any of the bagged supermarket stuff for at least a month, and we eat salad practically every day - some has also found its way to our respective parents.

Next vegetable to be harvested? See if you can guess...


.... yeah, it's a pea flower! I never realised they were such lovely flowers, looks very like a sweet pea to me. Shame I couldn't get the actual flower in focus, but it's not a bad macro for a phone really. I'll go out with Michael's camera tomorrow.

So yeah, everything's going well. I have to say I'm pleased so far with my first proper veg-growing experience.

Oh and check this out... a red-podded pea!!!

4 comments:

  1. Your garden is coming along beautifully.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Anna
    Your garden looks great. You asked me about Purple Podded Peas. I obtained my seed from the Heritage Seed Library, they allow members to have a few packets of veg seed each year - these seeds are from varieties which aren't registered with the EU so it is illegal to sell them!!!! However I think a purple podded pea must be registered for sale as I've seen it here: www.mammothonion.co.uk
    But if you email me via the link on my web site I could send you a few seeds, if you sow them in June you should get a crop and be able to save some seed for next year.
    As you can see on Resbie's blog - there's more than just one sort of purple podded pea! Isn't her new red podded one amazing!

    Celia

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your garden is lovely! Our little plot out at the farm is coming along, though we had to bring the pepper plants back here. They weren't growing well there. I think they need a more sandy medium so we brought them home to experiment on.

    Our garden is a nice experiment, but for it to be truly useful, we shouldn't be spending a half-tank of gas to go visit it!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you OC, I'm very pleased with it myself! Looking forward to eating lots of yummy veg.

    Thank you very much Celia, I've sent you an email. The red pea is fantastic!! I found 25 purple pea seeds on eBay at a starting bid of £1.99 + £1 postage, thought that was a bit steep! Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that one.

    Hi Sayre, hope your peppers pick up now you can give them a bit more TLC. I know they grow well in 8" pots with normal compost. Maybe you could grow some other veg in pots too?

    ReplyDelete