Suddenly there is sunshine, after what felt like weeks and weeks of rain and grey skies. Here’s a quick roundup of things in the garden:
- Fruit:
- Two apples on the tree (I took a couple off when they first appeared, to reduce the load on the tree in its first year[0]).
- A handful of raspberries, and the autumn raspberries flowering.
- A handful of strawberries from three troughs.
- Two rhubarb crowns transplanted from the allotment are doing well after wilting heavily at first.
- Salad veg:
- The bronze arrow-head lettuce has gone spectacularly to seed, with flower heads that are several feet tall. I’m hoping it’ll self-seed cleanly, but I’m not sure if there’s anything else around that crosses with it.
- The rocket jungle, though extensive, is getting a bit too peppery as it too goes to seed. I may hoick some of the plants up as there really is a lot of it. It’s also self-seeded into the gaps between the paving slabs.
- The misc lettuce still cropping happily in the salad bed.
- Other veg:
- The courgettes have started cropping and we’ve eaten the first couple.
- The chard hasn’t really germinated terribly well. There are a couple of plants but I was hoping for more. Intending to replant for an autumn/winter crop.
- No sign at all of the pak choi. Again, I’ll try replanting.
- We had a reasonable crop of peas but those have gone now.
- The tomatoes are growing away happily. The ones in the self-watering containers are doing noticeably better than the others.
- The turnips doing well and we’ve already eaten the first row. Intending to plant another couple of rows for a late-summer crop.
- There are plenty of carrots but they’re not growing all that fast. I’ve always struggled with carrots!
- Very few beets germinated from the row I planted. Given the close relationship between beetroot and chard and the poor germination rates for both, I’m wondering if the conditions were just bad for these plants. (Alternatively, I may have had old seed as I’ve been using up seed from older packets.)
Things to plant in the next month:
- Turnips.
- Chard.
- Pak choi.
- Perhaps some winter cabbage or lettuce?
- Rocket, except I won’t need to deliberately plant that as it’s happily planting itself.
[0] We bought it as a 3-yr-old tree; if it were actually a maiden I’d have removed all of the fruit in its first year.