I wrote about what our garden looked like last year
here. It's amazing how much things can grow over just one year. Our apricot tree is this year twice the size, having made it to the top of the wall. Although either due to such a cold winter and spring we don't seem to have any fruit on it this time. Perhaps it needs a good prune to put it's energy into a smaller but fruit producing tree. Such a pity as the fruit we got last year was amazing....oh well, there is always next year. This year we (when I say we I really mean my husband Ben. HE is the true green fingered one out of us!) have growing Mange Tout, Tomatoes, Sweetcorn, Beetroot, Radish, Spring Onions, Raspberries, Strawberries, Blackberries, Carrots, Cavelo Nero Kale, Squash, Cucumber and lots of Salad and herbs. Quite a lot to keep an eye on and keep pesky slugs snails, pigeons and little beetle bugs at bay!
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| side of our shed |
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| the rose that weaves its way through our apple tree |
Stanley is really enjoying the garden this year. He has been out planting up seeds with Ben and helping to water with his little yellow can. He is loving the hose too, and as we have no hose pipe ban this year we can indulge him a little. Although not to much as we are on a meter! As we wash in
green people stuff we can save his bath water and the washing up water to use in this amazing and unusually dry spell we are having! Stanley loves picking things washing them under the water butt taps and putting them straight into his mouth. His favourites are the raspberries and radishes. That boy has some odd flavour combos...
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| Our first beetroot |
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| helping to pick mange tout |
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| mange tout flowers // squash just beginning to grow |
The green roof experiment was such a success last year with the most ridiculous crop of tomatoes that we are repeating it again this year. Might as well make use of that sunbaked garage roof and do something useful with it.... This year we have two types of tomato - those amazing spanish style knarly ones and the little cherry toms. We will see how they get on. We also have some squash up there too, happy sprawling along the length. I will keep you posted hopefully with a crop update later on in the Summer.
What are your fail safe crops? Do you always grow the same things? And what are you favourite things to do with a glut of something?!
Ooh, everything looks so yummy! We grow zucchini every year and it does very well here in Massachusetts...sometimes *too* well. We have to get creative sometimes, making falafel, bread, sometimes even putting it into chocolate chip cookies!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful garden!
ReplyDeleteWe too have a hose obsessive here - we have to take the knob off the outdoor tap otherwise it would be on all the time! We are in our third year of growing and have loved peas every year. Made our favourite smashed peas on toast (Jamie Oliver recipe) for dinner last night. I feel we are still real garden novices trying out stuff, this is our first successful year with tomatoes and I'm hoping that the sweetcorn works, also french beans which are growing ok despite us having lots of bug fights. We are growing purple sprouting broccoli and cavelo nero again this year both worked so well last year, also courgettes as they seem easy, and like you lots of salad. Next year I think we'll give a full bed to strawberries as we just had the odd one or two at a time from our patch and something else was enjoying them instead of us!
ReplyDelete