The New Vegetable Patch
Monday 11th May
Menu
On this page:
A lot has happened since the last update over three weeks ago. I'll report by topic rather than chronologically, but first, here's what the orchard looked like on 19th April - plenty of blossom! This was the last picture from my non-smartphone, a Nolia 216, which I dropped while having a bonfire. I can say quite definitely, Nokia 216's are not fireproof :-(
However, a tidy-up in the TV room revealed my Samsung Galaxy J5, discarded after it stopped working - phones are so fussy, they don't like water (or fire). But I charged the battery & Lazaruslike, it was fine!! So now I have been taking plenty of pictures, and unlike the Nokia, the Samsung includes date & time in the name of each picture, so I can be more precise about when things actually happened! Here are the strawberry plants, with 3 of 6 in flower, on 2nd May. They are getting more attentive watering than usual, and if the birds stay away, we should get some strawberries this year.
Here is the minigreenhouse on the same day; it has proved very handy, housing the runnerbean seedlings, the courgettes, the sweetcorn and the tomatoes. By the time of this picture, it is housing a few back ups for the beans and courgettes, but mainly the 20 or so tomato plants. There are won't be enough room for them all in the greenhouse as they grow, so I'm planning to have them along the path outside the house.
Veg patch 1
You can see the shallots sprouting nicely on the left of pic below; look hard & you can see the main crop potatoes just breaking through the soil. (2nd May)
Runner beans out of the green house to harden up before planting. (2nd May)
Potatoes poking through a bit more. (4th May)
A bit more hardening up for the beans. (4th May)
Planting day for the runner beans; first, I put more compost into the trench, then fixed the frame - runner beans are like children, they really like a climbing frame! As I can't go to the shops, I augmented my bamboo poles from previous years with metal tubes cunningly joined. So glad I hadn't taken the tubes to the tip! Two views of the newly planted beans follow. (5th May)
And here they are enjoying the mid day sun the following day, and in the foreground the sweetcorn seedlings have been planted - I put them in a day or two earlier. (6th May)
Sweetcorn a bit more obvious here. (7th May)
There had been a frost a couple of days earlier, and a few of the plants have suffered - I replaced 2 of them with the backups. (8th May)
Veg patch 1 looking good - potatoes, runner beans & sweetcorn all coming along well. (Sunday 10th May)
OK - more soon!