It's a miracle! My broad beans have been resurrected!

Phoenix-like, my broad beans have emerged from the dead black flowers which gave a very convincing impression of being disease-ridden.  I had an inkling there was hope after googling the problem, and seasoned gardeners always seemed to reply to miserable amateurs like me by questioning whether they had examined the plants closely to see if pods were emerging from the black flowers. 

I confess to feeling a plonker after my last blog post, but am thrilled to see I've got a very wholesome crop on the way, and this gardening game is all about learning.  The plants are very different from last year though, only reach my knees, with beans tightly-packed on the stems, so am wondering if I've used a different type this year, or if it's because I planted them directly into the soil rather than starting them off earlier in pots as I did last year, producing chest-high plants.

Watering

We've had a long hot dry period here in Wales, which has been fantastic for everything in the garden, but has meant we've really had to concentrate on the watering.  Water butts are dry everywhere, and we've been using the hose to soak the plot and fill every receptacle possible.

We fill everything we can find.  We even filled a wheelie bin (not pictured) one
day.  We've since collected more vessels than this.

When it's as hot as it has been, getting wet with the watering is a pleasure.

Tunnel

We're running out of space in the polytunnel, so I've booted out the rickety trestle table and tidied up the tools so I can sow more lettuce and some carrots for the winter.  

Ta-dah! Space created!

The first tomatoes are appearing, and I'm still ruthlessly removing the side shoots so they don't turn into a crazy jungle.  I've spent loads of time weeding in the tunnel and transformed the tomatoes and the sweetcorn.

Before...

First tomatoes,
Oodles of flowers.

After!

I've been advised to trim the grapevine back to the bunches, and now the baby grapes are revealed I can see what a fantastic place a polytunnel is for grapes.  They are way ahead of outdoor ones.

Only planted this vine last year, so have no idea how the grapes taste.  According to the pic on the label they are green (will check the variety) but will they be sweet?  Or will I need to add home-made wine to my list of culinary delights?

I'm picking daily spinach, parsley and salad leaves, and although the rocket is flowering, the leaves are still tender and tasty, and the flowers have a nutty flavour.

The salad leaves continue to be gorgeous, but I'm aware they will start
bolting soon, so need to get a new row in.  For now though they are
mild tasting and tender.

Lovely aromatic basil.

I'd forgotten I sowed another row of spinach.
It's very welcome though, as the old stuff is
only good for cooking now and it'll be great to
have some baby leaves to add to salad.

Purple Sprouting

Meanwhile my purple sprouting broccoli plants were starting to go leggy and yellow, so it was time to dig another bed for them.  

Although this bed had been turned over in March, it was like
digging a field from scratch.

It was incredibly hot and took hours and hours as I had to
have regular breaks.  Once it was dug I went over it and
over it to try and remove maximum weeds.

And then it needed tons of raking...

Before finally getting the little plants in.  I added  my only
two butternut squash plants to the patch too.

 Peas & Courgettes

I've got a few peas in the tunnel and more outside, and although I know they'll never make it back to the dinner table, they are great for snacking on when working.

Along with freshly-pulled baby carrots, they are great for feeding anyone who gives me a hand too!

Oscar's favourite snack.

One day I'll grow enough so we can actually have them for dinner,

but for now they are delicious, sweet and crisp.

I have started picking courgettes already.  I am amazed by the way they go from having a few flowers to suddenly being fully fledged courgettes that need picking before they resemble marrows.

They were supposed to be mixed coloured courgettes, but every plant except one has turned out to be very pale green courgettes.  A shame because I really like the colour combination of having some bright yellow ones.

Only one traditional green plant, and I'll be interested to see if I can detect a difference in their  flavours.

Weeny baby pumpkin.  Every pumpkin is currently at this stage.

And finally...

Oscar cut all the rhubarb.  It was quite thin, probably through lack of rain, but there certainly was plenty of it.  It's now stewed, in a pie, with the rest heading for the freezer.

My favourite bit.  Finally relaxing in my tunnel, pretty exhausted with a chilled
bottle of cider Oscar kindly brought for me.  Bless him!

Broad Bean Disaster! Quel Horreur!

Totally pissed off to discover my broad beans have something awfully wrong with them but no idea what.  The symptoms are that they haven't grown very tall, the leaves are kind of tightly packed and the flowers are going completely black from the bottom of the plant, there are chunks missing out of the leaves and they've got no bloody beans on them.

 As if that wasn't disappointing enough...

...this is the compost heap where I planted six pumpkin plants a week ago.  Gone.  Decimated by bastard slugs. 

Ah well, at least the courgettes are doing well with baby courgettes already appearing on them, and the remaining pumpkin plants and French beans have survived, if not grown much.

Tonight I focused on weeding my onions, beetroot and swede.  I was again reminded of what a total amateur I am.  The onions were a real pain to weed since I'd planted them too close together and it was hard enough wiggling my hands in among them let alone getting a tool in there.  Next year I will not make that particular mistake.

A long fiddly job which will need doing again several times, but satisfying to see earth between the plants at last.

Was mighty grateful to my fab son Oscar who turned up with a radio and a chilled can of Strongbow, and after a refreshing break I got on with my work tittering to Ed Rearden's Week on Radio 4.

My cabbage plants were long overdue planting and I'd already dug a patch for them and fed it with garden compost and manure, so I got them in at last.  I'm really hoping the white butterflies have finished laying eggs so they don't get destroyed by caterpillars.  I wish I had a net to cover them with.  I also hope and pray that this area is now free from club root, or that these cabbages are as club-root resistant as they are supposed to be.

The tunnel
Everything is fab in the tunnel.  The sweetcorn is starting to look very impressive, and the carrots are continuing to provide occasional thinnings, although I am about ready to leave them to grow into whoppers now.  I also really want to get another row sown somewhere, but the tunnel is just about full.

The leaves are providing at least three households with as much fresh salad as they can eat, and the spinach is still being thrown into nearly everything I cook.  Again, I really want to get some more rows on the go, but have no space.

I've left a couple of self-set sunflowers in the tunnel for peas to grow up, but all the others I've replanted outside for a late summer display of golden lovliness.

The lady who keeps it all alive... the fantastic Mrs H, who runs away if I point a camera in her direction, but without her tireless watering duties, it would all be dead, so I sneak the odd shot of her because she so deserves to appear in this blog.

June is a crazy ol' month

One has to go a little bit crazy in June to keep up with the bonkers growth going on everywhere.
Suddenly everything had to be planted out, and space needed to be dug for it to all go in.  Any digging I'd done earlier in the year I was immensely grateful for, but grass and weeds were doing that mad June growth thing as much as the plants, so I had quite a big job on my hands.

Luckily uni was finished for a year, and after half term I didn't have many hours at work, so I had plenty of time to catch up.

First in - runner beans.  These had become beyond a joke and took quite a while untangling them, a bit like Christmas lights but more delicate.  Apparently you can't snap them off in the process or they won't continue to grow, so armed with this information I was mega-careful.  The result was amazingly well brought-on runner beans - instantly climbing and flowering!  Next year we need to be a month later on the seed planting though .

My home compost.  Full of tea bags, egg shells
and tomato seeds that feel the need to
germinate the minute they are released
from the compost bins.

The courgettes were big and wholesome and well beyond the slugs appetite (I do hope those aren't famous last words), and the poor little pumpkins were completely potbound in tiny little pots and were desperate to go out. 

This year I was determined to feed the ground so emptied one of my well rotted compost bins from home and barrowed it over to enrich the soil.  I also took the advice of Dawn & Ed and bought some farmyard manure for £5 from the local farmers co-op.  I forked a load of this in and five hours from when I'd started, I finally planted the courgettes, pumpkins and french beans.

Every single cucumber seed had germinated and they were desperate to be planted in some proper soil, so I planted as many of them along the back walls of the polytunnel as possible and remembering how they love to climb, added some strong sticks and criss-crossed them.

Tomatoes from various sources were also begging for some polytunnel space, so, teeny as they are I whopped them in.  Some are from Tywyn market from May, some from seed grown by Sue, others the gorgeous little orange cherries from my mother, and some were ones that germinated from my home compost, but since I buy mainly cherry tomatoes at home, they will hopefully bear lovely little cherry tom fruit.  Unfortunately I didn't sow any big ugly beef tomatoes this year.

The salad leaves continue to be daily pickable and I can hardly keep up with the spinach production.  Oscar asked me tonight (as I made spinach and chickpea felafel after last nights spinach quiche), why we have to have spinach in absolutely everything at the moment?

The carrots were suddenly in need of thinning.  For weeks I've been pulling up the odd root to find a skinny llittle pale thing at the end and now out of the blue the roots are orange and baby carrot-like, but obviously far too many to be able to grow successfully.  Next year I must be more careful with my carrot seed sowing.  I seem to have a mass in one spot (I do vaguely remember dropping a load of seeds) and many of them are not ever going to be worth eating because they have no room at all to grow.  

Another hour's work and I now have a bowl full of lovely baby carrots to throw into salads or munch on as a snack.  (Actually hard to open the fridge without eating one).

Cute carrots!

 What a difference a mow makes.