In bloom

Well we now have our first actual courgettes growing - two of our courgette plants have been sending out baby courgettes with lovely big yellow flowers on the ends. We have about half a dozen on each plant which is great. In other news the tomatoes are adjusting well to being in grow bags and the bean plants are beginning to flower.

Another busy saturday out in the garden! During the week we noticed some mini courgettes growing and lots of flowers on the mangetout which are climbing up the netting well. The strawberry plants have sent out lots of new leaves and some more flowers so we are hoping for a second crop after the current ones have ripened. 

On saturday afternoon we headed out into the garden and got to work. Matt put 9 of the tomato plants into growbags as well as some of the pepper plants from the greenhouse and has made a prototype watering device from an old squash bottle. Another sweetcorn plant was ready to go into the soil aswell and we have taken the herbs out of the greenhouse as the coriander and thyme have started to flower.

Whilst Matt was busy with the plants I put on an old pair of gloves and de-weeded the soil bed and gravel strip. The gravel had become seriously overgrown with weeds despite a black protector sheet underneath the stones. It was satisfying work although I found two slugs, one of which I almost picked up along with some weeds so Matt fed them to a frog that was hiding next to the fence! We also discovered some baby caterpillars munching on our cauliflower plants and a bigger, fatter green one and lots of eggs on a couple of the plants! We picked up the caterpillars we could see and put them out the front door for the birds and have brushed off what we could of the eggs so hopefully the trauma of that will stop them hatching. We will see what happens over the next few days but might need to get some form of pest control.

A Rainy Day in June

Well we've had some pretty wet weather recently with a couple of thunderstorms aswell so most of the plants have shot up. The cauliflowers and potato shoots especially enjoyed the watering but we moved the strawberries and some of the smaller plants out of the bowls that they were sitting in in case they drowned, quite a contrast to the previous few days where everything was incredibly thirsty due to the hot sun!

Luckily there seems to be no evidence of slugs since the downpours apart from a snail that tried to get in the front door, most traumatic bringing Fran flashbacks of slug invasions when left at home alone in the holidays! 

Some of the tomatoes are ready to go into growbags now so we are experimenting with making drip irrigation systems from old plastic bottles. We are also looking for good homes for some of the tomato plants to go to so let us know if you would like one!