Chilled out plants

I have only lasted an hour before coming in for a cup of tea. It’s cold out there. Only 7C.  But at least it’s not raining, just drizzling lightly.  So that’s a bonus.

All I have managed so far is to plant out my 24 runner beans. Well, 23. I decapitated one as I levered it out of its pot.

Last year I must have sown dozens of these mighty beans; only a few germinated and not one thrived.  This year I’m trying a new variety called Moonlight which promises to have the vigour of a runner bean, but the flavour of a French bean.

It sounded intriguing.

But one thing I have learned in my high mountain garden is that you can’t expect runner beans to climb high and produce beans all summer long. Well, they will do that in an exceptionally wet summer.  And if I pile on the muck.

So I’m putting them to use in another way.  I’m going to encourage them to climb less than two feet high and then run along the new chestnut supports.  If they produce beans that will be great; but they can shade the crops below at the same time.

If I get crops.  This cold weather is a touch dispiriting.

Back out I go to chat with Artur and then plant out my new gifts from Teo.

***

One more cup of tea later and a very warming lunch.  I seem to have ticked a lot of things off my list. Must have set the bar too low.

The strawberry bed is now weeded.  Those little beasties just fell out of the soil with all this rain (almost two inches in two days) so that was great. A few weeks ago I was levering them out with a fork.  Now all I need is mulch and it’s done.  I only have one bag left alas, so some new weeds are bound to take advantage of the bare soil.  But that’s fine. Getting the roots out felt good.

Hilarous shot of the creeping weeds into the back of the soft fruit orcchard. There are dozens of young strawberry plants in there somewhere.

I tried to stick to the task and not stray into weeding the potager path nearby.  I swear these things have come up just this week. In design parlance you could call it softening the edges of the granite wall and the gravel path.  But frankly, they’re just weeds and will turn into knee high monsters if I neglect them.

But I had more fun planting out.  My gifts from Teo, now in the soft fruit orchard are a tayberry, a loganberry and a framboise noire, which I have discovered is a rubus occidentalis.  A plain old black raspberry.

I planted it at the very back of the  bed heading over the steep slope towards the olive tree and new cherry tree ten feet below.  Teo has warned me it’s rampant. but that’s fine; the bank only hosts weeds now anyway.   Variety is fun.

And having direct sown (itching to turn that into an adverb but resisting) some few dozen broad beans, I took pity on the poor critters and went up to the potting shed to sow them in containers.

I now have some spare root trainers with the runner beans in the ground. So in went 28 Aquadulce broad beans to beef up the stock.

These beans were a very generous gift from our friend Elodie.  She has moved house and no longer has a vegetable garden, so I’m going to share my produce with her.  And last week she came by with a huge tray of wonderful seeds. I haven’t given myself the treat of sorting through things as most of my sowing is done.  But my eyes lit on this huge 1kg sack of organic Aquadulce broad bean seeds.  Wealth indeed.   And I’m very touched by her generosity.