A vine old time

So lovely to be back: especially as there was a heavy rainstorm in the night and now it’s bright and sunny and calm. The vegetable garden is still intact thank goodness. And the little Swiss chard plants which were pruned so heavily by deer teeth last week are even showing signs of recovering. And I have just the netting to protect them. Will have to buy in lettuce plants to get them off and running again. No time now to grow them from seed.

And the flower garden too is putting on plenty of growth. I can even detect some signs of flower heads on some of the plants. The grasses are bulking out well too. But the Verbascum (Aaron mix, not the head high yellow weeds) are still sulking and crowded and not doing much but getting wider rather than taller. Must be patient. It looks as though we had rain this past week as the water butt is full to the brim. And my tiny basil seedlings have that Ardeche drowned look. Will bring them all into the potting shed now that I can keep an eye on them. The blast of heat from the Perspex roof should see them back in the right growing atmosphere again.

Major achievement today: the vineyard is pruned. All long wavy vines are now cropped neatly to just above the wire cordons. It even looks like a proper vineyard (if you exclude the low mat of weeds in between the rows). Jane came down to help and with two the whole process went rather quickly.

Then under threatening skies it was back to the lower vegetable bed to do some fine net working. Off with the large tennis court type net around the perimeter (only took about six hours to put up) and on with a more targeted netting directly over the most precious crops. It is more discreet and hopefully will save the lettuce and chard from attack. Even the lettuce is growing back from the cropped crowns. Amazing.

But before I could actually put the nets and the cloches down I had to do a major weeding first. I just know that when crops are inaccessible due to nets you just never feel its worth it to grub up weeds with the same alacrity.

So I weeded and weeded and the rain came sheeting down but I refused to stop. Rather refreshing really until the goretex jacket proved permeable to the wet and I managed to get completely soaked to the skin. Good soaking rain I muttered through gritted teeth. But at least the cabbage bed was (mostly) weed free by the end of the day.