22 June 2015

A busy few days ahead...

Good evening fellow diggers,

Apologies for posting this a day late. I was going to do a brief resume yesterday but decided to delay until now so as to maintain the high standard you have all become accustomed to!

Well firstly the pollen count is very high here so excuse me if I sneeze all the way through. I forgot to mention last week after my marathon weeding and digathon that I filled seven 50litre compost bags which are now residing at the recycling centre - thank you to the kind gentleman who helped me when the contents of one bag defied gravity when upside down and refused to be shaken out. And talking of recycling, I have a compost bin behind my back fence which is sometimes awkward to get to as, depending on the weather, the gate sticks. I managed to get to it this week and have put some composter in it and forked it round so hopefully that will hasten the process. In the meantime, I ordered (and have arrived) two more composters for inside the garden. One is just basically a tall cylindrical heavy duty plastic container with holes in, a flap at the top for putting the composting materials in and a flap at the bottom for removing the composted compost. The other is a tumbler composter which has yet to be assembled by him indoors (yes, I know I can do it, but...). The cylindrical composter is already nearly half full as I now bring home recyclable waste food and cardboard from work.

The pond; apparently I have my own version of 'The Great Escape' as some of the baby frogs have made it into my neighbour's garden - I  wonder how far they'll travel (the frogs, not my neighbours!).  This year the water lily has produced two flowers, white with a pink centre. Still no sign of the fish I'm still feeding.

On Tuesday one of the fuchsias and a couple of the sweet peas began to flower; The snapdragons continue to flower in a delightful spread of white, red and yellow and there is a double coloured one - red on the outside and yellow on the inside. The squash plant in the veg bed has three flowers and now the one in a pot has started to flower.  For my salad lunch on Tuesday I picked some peas (really sweet tasting), radish, baby spinach, beetroot and kale leaves, spring onions and mustard and cress.

Thursday...and it appears that the gherkins I sowed after losing the last batch have turned into fennel -  they sure look like fennel seedlings! So I have planted yet more and yes, the seeds did come out of the gherkin seed packet and yes, they do look like gherkin seeds so we shall see. Lucky I like fennel.

On Friday I picked my first raspberry. Just the one, but there's more to come. The peas I sowed last week have already sprouted and are doing well. Bought another couple of fruit trees - gooseberry Hinnomaki Red and a goji berry which are now planted out. I have also potted on more peppers and chillies. The strawberries appear to have come to a halt at the moment.

Not long home from a couple days away and because we had some rain this morning everything has shot up. I really must dig up the early potatoes this week although I don't think it will be digging as they are in potato bags so it will be gloves on and hands in. I did have a bit of a root around last week and definitely felt something hard...

Also I think the onions are ready to come up this week - especially the shallots - although Monty hasn't said anything about them yet nor the potatoes and my book says beginning of July but, we are nearly there.

Apologies no pics this week as they are not yet on my laptop but I shall delight you with them next week. Have a good week - getting exciting isn't it!!

DD