Weed taming

Eight until eight. What a fantastic session. Weeding all the day.

From this view you can’t see the deliciously neat garden and bare earth between perfectly pampered plants.

But the sky was so blue I couldn’t resist trying to capture the mid July garden.

I started the day clearing the last of the charlotte potatoes from the quardant where the tomatoes and aubergines are now taking hold.

There were just two rows to go.   The spuds are not very large, but by goodness they were numerous.   It never ended.

But I needed the space for new plants.   In went a row of nicotiana plants which were languishing scandalously long in the potting shed.

And in went dozens of basil plants too.

It gave me space to sort out the tomatoes properly too.   I managed to  stake them neatly; mulch like mad, take off all the side shoots and generally turn the forest of tomatoes into neat orderly rows.

As it was so early, I decided to pick a few bunches of lavender. I must do more tomorrow, but it was fun to pick these prolific flowers now to enjoy them later in the year.

And I suspect I will get even more flowers from a lot of the plants.   I’ve never really studied lavenders before. I just thought each flower is on a single stalk, but no.   There are at little flowers lower down the stem. So I’m going to see if I can get some repeat flowering from the almost 100 plants all over the garden.

That was my brief scented and aesthetic break in the morning. I recharged with a cup of tea and then surged out to do another part of the weed infested potager.

Luckily I had my little helper all day.   He was being a perfect cat: lurking, within sight, ocassionally demanding and often sitting right beside me as I weeded.

Naturally he would often choose the exact spot where I wanted to weed, but I just worked around him and waited for him to overheat and move somewhere shadier.

No such luck for me.   I was determined to get the entire vegetable garden done by the end of the day.

The swiss chard and carrot bed is very lush and not too weedy. But I had to work my way carefully between the courgette plants. They are fragile beasts and temperamental.

I just hope the small courgettes on each plant will turn into decently sized veg.   Some of them seem to reach a certain dimension and then just drop off.

I don’t know why, but I managed to remove any small weeds from around each base, and have to hope for the best.

The parsnips have put on way too much top growth.   But I don’t water them, so it’s just the odd rainy season we were having earlier this year.

I haven’t dug about underneath to check weather the roots are forming well.  

If the carrots are anything to go by, I won’t need to worry this autumn.   The carrots are fat and juicy and have a wonderful flavour.

I seem to be blethering. Knackered. It’s after 10pm and I still haven’t started on the next batch of apricot jam.

I may give in and just stone them and then freeze the fruit for next week.   What do they say about jam tomorrow?

I’ll finish the day with the last view of my garden. Artur had taken up a central position in the bean bed hunting moles.

Oh yes, I have plenty of mole runs right underneath all sorts of veg.   I have to share this garden with all sorts of critters. Here’s hoping the rest of the mountain wildlife doesn’t pile in and munch their way through this perfectly weeded patch.