Weedy wonderland

Back after a week away. I missed the worst of the wet and the cold, but have a tail end of a nasty mistral wind blowing today.   It looks set to improve from tomorrow, and my plants will be grateful.

I know you aren’t meant to anthropomorphise and all, but the word huddle just about sums up the state of my tomatoes, aubergines and other potager plants.   Blasted by wind, cold and wet.   They have put on very little growth and look a bit black around the leaves. Do we blame the Icelandic volcanic ash yet?

Can’t blame the state of the road on anything but rootling wild boars mind you.   They are getting close. This is just above the house near the walnut trees. Goodness only knows what nourishment they were looking for underneath a sandy no plants grow here road.

This morning I decided that the best way to escape the wind (until it warmed up) was to get into the potting shed and give it a well deserved spring clean. It took hours.   But it’s done, it’s neat and I now will keep a lot of my too small seedlings in here for a bit rather than risking them outdoors.

This cold wet weather has brought out a very rare enemy in the phalanx of attackers in the garden: the slug. Or snail. I haven’t found any to kill so I’m not blaming one or the other. But slime trails around the base of all but one of my squashes lends itself in their direction.   Annoying.   So I am putting little plastic bottle cloches over what’s left and hope for the best. Oh, yes, and they ate all but one of my cucumbers as well.  

Needless to say, now that I have a pristine working environment I lost no time in sowing more replacements.   In went cucumber seeds, squash seeds, plus a few trays of sunflowers (autumn beauty and Italian white).   I have two more packets of squash seeds to do later. But right now I want to tie up all the sweet peas that have put on growth and get them going up the poles.   And maybe start on some weeding. It’s a bit of a weedy wonderland out there. Where to begin? It’s a toss up between the courtyard gravel garden or the blackberry bushes.   Maybe I’ll toss a coin.

Pause here while we admire the first of the Gertrude Jekyll roses out at long, long last.

*****

I did the blackberries and the rest of the soft fruit.   The greedy me took over: which would I prefer to have? Easy access to fruit or a clear expanse of gravel.   It took ages and I managed to find the nettles and the brambles. But the blueberries, the jostaberries, white currants, black currants and yes, the blackberries are now weed free.   Huge volumes of weeds resulted in this mighty task.

No pictures yet, except for this before shot of the white currant drowning in weeds. I’ll take some tomorrow morning.

Other chores today included finishing the netting on the lower left quadrant of the potager: a playful job in the mistral wind, but I have threaded long bamboo poles down the bottom of the nets to hold them down.

And I have added more Cavocllo Nero brassicas to the top left quadrant of the veggie bed.   I found them bursting out of their pots up in the shed this morning, and decided that if I hauled out some of the lurking leeks, I could fit a dozen more under one of the now freed up cloches.

Why do I call them chores? These tasks today were a delight. A whole day devoted to gardening; what could be better? And weeding does give one a satisfied feeling once the hand stops throbbing and you ignore the blister forming on the secateur hand. Tomorrow I shall do the courtyard and get the netting up on the top brassica rows.

I even managed to have a few of my first crop today: strawberries. Half a dozen of very sweet and very tasty fruits. Lots of budding berries this year which is amazing considering what they put up with over the winter. But they aren’t dainty fruit. Why, I even found a small crop growing under the monster clematis under the vines.   I’m trying to get this clematis to reach for the dizzy heights of the courtyard above; but it resists.