Old money inch

Well over an inch of rain in a week.   What wonderful news.   I drove up yesterday; abandoned everything and zoomed up to the rain gauge to check.   No wonder everything looks lush and weedy.

The sweet peas were all up and I simply had to get them into a vase before they went over and turned into peas.   Two lovely vases later I munched the real peas and thought about what to do next.

That’s what often happens on the first day back.   You dither.   So I decided to harvest as much veg as I could before those ominous black clouds overhead emptied more rain onto the garden.

Peas and broad beans. More peas than the beans which actually need about another week; preferably in some sunshine.   But I have enough to make a tasty meal along with salad which is bursting everywhere.

I know it’s mad, but I have actually decided to pick most of the peas in mangetout form rather than wait for the peas to develop.   I can rarely get the reward from waiting so long for the peas and then having to shell them. It always seems a waste of green shell – the podder always just crunches through them while they shell the peas.   So if I pick them young I can blanch them and then freeze them for later.   Next year I may plant just the mangetout variety.

Just before I left last week I found that there were the first few raspberries, so up I trudged through the weeds to the top vegetable bed. And goodness what a thicket of growth.

I hope there are tubers in among all that potato growth, it looks way too healthy.

But I won’t lift any until next week.   But I did collect a punnet (squishing down the top ones to make room) of lovely raspberries.   They aren’t in the best condition – more suited for raspberry cordial than eating with yoghurt for breakfast.   But I’ll keep my eye on the next crop so I can pick them while they are juicy.

The cabbages up here are looking very healthy and putting on quite a lot of growth.   More than the lower potager ones.   But the swiss chard up here seem a bit more puny.   But that’s gardening. I was actually concerned that all the brassicas up here would get parched from lack of watering. I tend to neglect this area as it’s such a faff to haul 200 metres of hose all the way up.   But the rain has sorted things beautifully.  

And speaking of beautiful; here are a few action shots of the lower vegetable beds. I never seem to stand back and admire the detail of the new paths and layouts as I am forever just diving in to eat peas and smell the flowers.

All the fluffy bits in between the onions and garlic are self sown cosmos plants. I have decided to leave them there as I will lift the onions soon and the quadrant will seem a little bare.

Actually I have started planning for this eventuality by dotting the quadrant with squash and pumpkin plants that I sowed last month.   Hopefully they won’t be found by marauders and will get up and growing to cover this area with great greenery and eventually veg.

And if that doesn’t work out I can just plant more flowers.   I have sunflowers sprouting like sprouts up in the potting shed and can make a crop of those instead.   I have also way too many basil seedlings – these too are going all over the beds in the hope that they will not be picked off by slugs. It really is tremendously damp around here.   Some are protected by plastic bottle cloches, but eventually they get too big and I imagine they are safe.

The first early Charlottes ought to be ready in this part of the vegetable garden next week.   And the tomatoes have survived their brutal beginnings and are actually starting to surge.   I have to keep pinching out the sideshoots almost daily now.   You can’t see them in the pictures as I am training sweet peas up the same stakes.

I sowed too many in spring and couldn’t bear to part with a single plant. So the excess were planted in this once bare patch of the garden.   And they will be well over before I have to start worrying about the tomatoes suffering from the overcrowding.

And just in front of the tomatoes are the cucumber frames. and one single solitary cucumber. Sad I know, but slugs at the dozen plants I had put out last month.   So in the meantime I popped in a few sunflowers to make use of the natty construction.   And they now threaten to overwhelm.   But the cucumber replacements I sowed didn’t come up and I have only now sown the new batch.   The sunflowers can enjoy their frolics here for ages yet.

The cabbages up in the top left quadrant of the vegetable bed are fine; but not stellar.   I need to give them a mighty weed and mulch this week. And kill more gendarmes.   Those are the pesky red beetles (always mating) that eat the leaves. I squish with impunity; but as the cabbages are well cloched against cabbage white butterfly it’s not easy thing to sneak up on the red beetles and  get them.   You tend to get yourself caught up in netting and give yourself away. No such thing as a sneaky approach. And you need it to catch them before they do into the defensive tuck and drop to the ground.

I’m flagging.   What else? The soft fruit area is still a few weeks behind last year’s harvest date, but getting closer.   The white currant is first up and out, and the red currants, although puny, are not far behind.

The blueberry bushes are still small, but bursting with almost ripe fruit. I think you could get one breakfast serving of fruit from these tiny bushes.   I really must move them this winter to a more convivial spot.   They were scorched by the sun last year.   And the single one behind the jostaberry bushes did not get pollinated.   I heard that you need two blueberries side by side for them to produce fruit. And even though the single blueberry is just two metres away, it looks forlornly bare of berries.

The wondrous jostaberries in between the blueberry bushes are still stubbornly green, so are a week at least off being edible. Being on the tart side already thanks to their gooseberry parentage, you don’t want to bite into one of these beauties green.

One thing that we can bite into now are the cherries. Hurrah, fruit on all the trees. And some of them aren’t even impossibly high to pick.   I think I shall make jam this week.