Hello, hello, good to be back

No, I hadn't forgotten the blog. We've been away on holiday in the South of France, which was wonderful. Our daughter and son-in-law kept the garden well watered for us while we were away.

You can really see the difference when you come back after a fortnight away. The potato patch is like a forest. The runner beans are close to the top of their wigwams, so I believe I have to start pinching the tops out soon. Parsnips and french beans are doing really well, and the carrots, peas and lettuces which I planted shortly before we went away are coming through. Onions are mostly doing very well. The only things that appear to be struggling a bit are the spring onions which are still very tiny, and the leeks which are still thinner than I expected as well as not too many of them having germinated. Some of the radishes were ready to eat as you'll see from the attached pictures. We've had a few in salads yesterday and today and they were very tasty. I expect I should be putting in some more radishes, spring onions and lettuces, indeed I probably should have done so already but with so much going on it's been hard to keep on top of it all.

I'm sure next year with the experience gained and with less groundwork to do things will progress in a more organised way.

We're almost there

What a weekend. The new shed is up. We ordered a skip in the week and spent most of Friday evening and Saturday morning breaking up old paving slabs and putting them in it along with the remains of the old shed, sundry pieces of brick and lumps of wood and anything else that wasn’t moving!
We also dug a bit more of the vegetable bed and got some peas in and a couple of small rows of chrysanthemums so we can have cut flowers in the summer and autumn. Still need to plant carrots and lettuces and should put in some more radishes and spring onions, but we’ve mostly managed everything. We’re pretty pleased with our efforts, and it should be a lot easier next year without all the garden re-arranging.
We dug around the outside of the new shed and removed as much Japanese Anenome root as we could. It seems a shame to get rid of them because they are lovely, but they are very invasive. I’m sure they will try to grow again, but I will declare war on them with contact poison as they come up. Re-planted the area with some summer bedding and planted some nasturtium seeds. They’ll brighten up the area and the leaves are excellent on salads.
We earthed up the potatoes again. They seem to have gone berserk, hopefully the end product will be good. Everything else we’ve planted seems to be doing quite well, but there’s still no sign of the parsnips. Some of the radishes should ready to eat soon. We’ll be able to have a ceremonial eating of the first fruits (vegs?).
Lawn has been cut, vegetable beds weeded apart from the two thin lines where the parsnips should come up. I don’t know what a parsnip seedling looks like so everything that’s nearby will have to stay until I’m sure one way or the other. The perennial border looks good despite having very little time spent on it. We do have half a dozen new plants to put in it but I’m not sure that will happen before we go on holiday.
We’ve bought a new plastic compost bin to replace the rotten wooden one. It needs to go where the old one was, so that’s going to require a bit of spadework.
Late on Sunday afternoon after we’d stood back and admired the look of the garden we thought we ought to give everything a good watering in. Having done that the heavens opened and we had the majority of June’s rainfall in a couple of hours.

Busy weekend........

..... but not much gardening.

It's been hectic. Ton of topsoil delivered Friday. Moved most of it on Friday evening and have earthed up the potatoes and spread the rest around. I expect we will eventually need at least another ton.

7 mile walk on Saturday followed by lunch, with 'Blisters', the church walking group . Came back and bought some canes to make a wigwam for the beans.

Sunday, church followed by putting up two wigwams for the beans and two for sweet peas which I planted seeds for at the same time. Denise has planted a few herbs. we went to the gym after that. The dwarf French beans that the grand-daughters helped plant are coming through now. No sign of the parsnips yet.

Monday morning was spent with us demolishing the old shed and taking most of it to the dump in preparation for the man coming to put up our new shed on Thursday. Our other shed is now so full of stuff you can barely move in it. Good job my bike is at the shop having a service. Looks like we're going to need a skip to get rid of the rubbish from the garden. There's still masses of digging and planting to do. If it doesn't happen soon then some stuff won't get planted. Did I mention we need a new compost bin?