Tales from our Vegetable Patch
G R O W L I T T L E P L A N T S , G R O W!
This is how our garden is looking, this sunny evening.
It’s coming along, this little garden of ours. The vegetable beds we made a couple of years back are flourishing – we have already harvested the radishes from Elodie’s patch – she was so proud of them (I must admit they didn’t taste that great – apparently it’s been too warm for radishes – that’s my story and I’m sticking with it) but the peas, carrots, peppers and green beans are coming along nicely.
Only the peas so far have had a little nibble from some snail friends – they’ve been munched to within an inch of their lives in parts but they seem to be bouncing back. I’ve read Nasturtiums are the way forward on the snail front- they’re ideal to plant alongside runner beans as they’ll entice away any caterpillars and slugs, I’m going to give it a whirl – here’s to hoping! But the hot weather means we haven’t has nearly as many pesky slugs and snails as we normally do. Our fruit bushes are growing larger but not actually producing much more fruit!! We’ve had a few raspberries this year but a pesky bird ate the gooseberries we were just about to harvest – Mr M was pretty miffed – he loves gooseberries. Read here for more vegetable garden ideas.
It was only today that we realised we forgot to plant potatoes this year – we usually do them in bags and they are our largest crops! How could we forget?! I’ve no idea if we’ve left it too late to plant them this year – should we still give it a shot?
Once again, our strawberry plants have not grown (I’m not sure why we always struggle with strawberries, maybe the green fingered of you out there can let me know?) but the lovely people at GBC Group sent us some Strawberry seeds to try so we’re hoping these will do better! They’ve made a nice little start so far and are little plants so far – we’re hoping that we will have some strawberries ready for Pimms for Wimbledon! Elodie has been asking to watch Wimbledon this year so I’m hoping I may actually learn the rules of Tennis this year – I’m totally clueless on tennis but I have been loving the World Cup this year……………here’s hoping!
The biggest news so far on the garden front has been…………we have a patio! So exciting! When we moved in, we had a crumbled crazy paving of sorts but with the kitchen renovation, it was in a real mess and so Mr M and my Dad built a new patio! That sentence there – makes it sound easy……it was anything but! It was so very much longer a project than we anticipated and so much more arduous. I’m not sure if Mr M knew how tricky it would be – he would have even started it! It meant many full weekends of hard labour for my Dad, my mum and Mr M – all in this heat! But we have a very beautiful patio – I love it! My family all worked really hard to get it finished for the lovely dedication we had for Archie at the weekend. It may be a little late (he is two very soon) but it was a lovely day with a BBQ on our pretty patio! I’m so thankful for all the family help we had to make this day special!
We’ve been enjoying the summer weather with several BBQs so far – I mean, who knows how much longer this gorgeous weather will last? Friends, BBQ food, sunny-oh-so sunny weather – I’d count this as my most perfect way to spend every weekend and may do this until early October, thank you very much! And we have some gorgeous solar lights for our trees now for summer evening wine drinking courtesy of Walton’s. We may get a few more to make more of an impact around the garden – it’s quite like Christmas all year round!
So here’s to summer and blossoming gardens and perfect patios! How lovely is it to spend summer days with friends?
Are you loving this garden weather? If you’re thinking about growing vegetables with kids – here are the benefits!
~ ~ ~
What are you growing this month? Are you hoping to grow any fruits or vegetables this year?
