Mid Season

This is the hard work time of year. The easy bit (plant seeds and sit back for a week, two weeks while they hatch) is done. Now there is a whole nursery fully of baby plants that are crying for attention.

However some plants are already doing their thing - as the pic of the Honeoye strawberry shows. We've had our second harvest (second ripe strawb) from this plant this morning, and still more to go.

New in town this week, hatchings from the cucumber, squash, sweetcorn mangetout and borlotti bean seeds.

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V borlotti bean triffids

I have been vigourous in my potting on of seedlings... more or less. Chillies, tomatoes, patty pan squash and the asparagus have all been moved into bigger containers to help them develop. The asparagus are doing OK. I should really do something about getting a bed for them but the area I was considering needed a run over with the strimmer (whipper-snipper) and I ran out of strimmer string today.

In the garden bed, there are now only four cabbages remaining. The sweet peas are not dying, but neither are they gaining in size. The peas I so carefully grew in the toilet rolls have been reduced to sticks by evil snails (liberal application of slug pellets seems to have cured that problem.

I need to get on top of the weeding - there are weeds taking over all over, and bindweed coming through the fence from next door. Today I took the unusual step of weeding my plants-in-pots (I'm not usually so diligent) so the poor plants can breathe a bit. (There were all a bit swamped).

It's not too far off raspberry season - the first of the berries is already faintly pink. Looking forward to that. However I think only the old bushes will fruit this year; the Lidl "from stick" canes are growing well but probably not up to fruiting much this year.

And we have blueberries! I did wonder if they were fruiting but while checking the pots today I saw that yes, there are some blueberries. And here is a picture to end on. (Sorry about the fuzzy focus).