Weeding and pegging

The afternoon was devoted to the mighty weed.   I had two areas that needed a bit of attention.   The strawberry bed and the soft fruit orchard.

Actually I had another reason to rummage about the strawberry bed; tis the season of the runner.   I needed to sort out the runners of the mother plant and peg them out so that they would make new plants.

This year it’s so much easier now that I can scratch below the deep mulch and just place them in situ. No more potting and pegging and waiting a few months (and having to water) before I could cut the runner off and look after the new plants somewhere else and then have to plant them again next year.

I’m pleased that the verbena bonariensis thicket is going well in the strawberry bed. You can never see it in pictures as they are so airy and fine.   But a cloud of pale purple in front of the stone wall of the barn is looking very good indeed.

I have yanked out lots of unwanted plants in the barrel in the middle of the potager, and think I will put the basil seedlings in here. I have way too many that have germinated way too well.   Heaps in the ground already and I have about 40 to go.

Luckily some of the teensy violas from Leslie and Teo are still going strong in here. I’m just waiting for them to self seed everywhere.

And then it was just a quick scuttle to the soft fruit orchard in the early evening sunshine.   Weeding here is a doddle now that I have so much weedproof and mulch down. And there was the added bonus of munching on blackberries while I worked.

This has been a good year for them. They loved all that endless heat and sunshine. And I’m trying to layer as many of the branches as I can – I want to make extra plants for Teo this autumn.

Suddenly it’s 8pm already. Time to collect a punnet of the last jostaberries and go indoors.