Week 12 in the gardens of the west- 22 July

We can't keep up with it all!

20 bags of red currants 14 of red gooseberries 4 of green gooseberries 4 of black currants and more still to come... The Bramley is brimming and the mulberries are getting bigger and slightly pink. It feels like everything is rushing faster and faster.

There are new flowers every day - pink love-in-the-mist:

butterfly gladioli,

bright daylillies, the first of the sunflowers - a dark chocolate variety,

the bright white of the old Michaelmas daisies 

and the wonderful helterskelter tassles of the teasels. 

The vegetables are in abundance too - the best brassicas ever including some very presentable cauliflowers and hispi cabbage, a mountain of peas and a great tangle of pumpkin vines now enveloping all the tiny crannies of old potatoe and broad bean plots. 

Beautiful (but sort of useless for eating) glove artichokes.

Good week in the garden - rain and sun, good for the garden.

Time of plenty-

It feels as though The Orchard is bursting with life at the moment, and there is more produce than we can eat and give away.

I just discovered that the climbing beans have been secretly growing, hiding under all the foliage, and suddenly I had a carrier bag full of beans!

There is masses of soft fruit, shared with the birds, and the badgers are making nightly forages through the rows, bashing down foliage and leaving their marks!

Interestingly, the birds are not so keen on loganberries as they are tart, but we are having to net the sweet raspberries as they are taking them all.

The flower garden is producing many wonderful bunches... either yellows oranges green and white or pinks blues and purples. The gypsophila is great, worth putting in another quick row. Masses of cornflowers, cosmos, snap dragons, long purple spike flowers and here come the gladioli! The dahlias were ravaged by slugs. maybe worth growing in pots first before planting out.

The first sunflower is towering majestically over the flower garden.

All looking good

Week 11 in the South West

2 CC

The garden looks like it's going over a bit, sadly. BUT there are still some really beautiful bits. The garden is bi-coloured with mostly white and green: green of all the veg leaves, and white from this lovely flower:

 We're not sure whether it is chamomile or feverfew! We've done lots of research online (where would we be without google?), but the jury's still out. There are two slightly different varieties - maybe one is feverfew and the other chamomile? Any suggestions welcome!

Lots of rain this week - which is great for everything grow-grow-growing! (Including the slugs... A has been diligently picking them off at night, and she found 30 on Wednesday!! All munging the lovely veg and the dahlias.) The field is greening up again after the hay making too, so it's looking much prettier from the house - and better for the sheep.

Lots of firsts this week!

A and J ceremonially ate the first tomato last night - apparently it was very good.

The first sunflower is out! We think it may be a little confused actually as we weren't expecting them until late August (normal time), but never mind!

First gladioli out - beautiful, and a bonus as we weren't expecting flowers until next year.

First peas eaten - apparently very good.

And thousands and thousands and thousands (maybe a slight exaggeration) of redcurrants. Beautiful on the bush - glistening jewels of red colour against the green. Also blackcurrants and gooseberries, and raspberries from a neighbour. Drowning in soft fruit! Lots in the freezer, raspberry jam, redcurrant jelly, crumbles, little tartlets and on cereal every morning.

Slugs coming back in force, although A doing very well on slug patrol.

Broad beans and sugar snaps over, making way for squashes and pumpkins. Beautiful courgette and huge cucumber picked this week.

All looking very good - and the cutting patch is about to spring into even more colour!

Week 10 in the South West

The Orchard

It's been a happy and encouraging week at the orchard with soft fruit bushes bending with delicious produce ... loganberries, blueberries and wonderful sweet plump cultivated blackberries. The blackberries are a revaluation, no tartness just a bomb of sweet juice.

I must mention the apricots which look so golden and gorgeous. I stewed a couple that fell and they were brill. How amazing to be able to grow edible apricots. The tree is only in its second year.

All the veg is growing a treat and the nets are discouraging the pigeons. So far the deer are sparing our beans and beetroot, but we have to be vigilant.

The flower patch is gradually filling up and I have given away lots of bunches this week... Snap dragons, gazanias, gyp (saved from the rabbits with fleece... such a fab cutting flower), cornflowers, Veronica.

The Larkspur has failed but I must try again next year as it is great for cutting.

The rubekia is growing sturdily with a promise of golden blooms in August through to frost, if the orchard creatures spare them.

Solomon's seal is being munged a bit, but going strong.

The Garden

Successes! 

A left for a conference in Cambridge on the 9th with a box full of garden produce for T and H: the first beautiful green cucumber, the umpteenth bouquet of sweet peas, a good dose of broad beans, a bunch of herbs, the first three baby beetroots, and the second picking of courgettes, two punnets of soft fruit (red gooseberries and redcurrants) all on a bed of Coombe Cottage hay!

So, the big story of the last two weeks is the hay! It was cut by a neighbour on 29th June, turned daily until July 3rd and put into bales on that day ahead of a promised thunderstorm (which never came...).

Alliums finally showing their colours:

Beautiful persian buttercups (definitely getting more next year - thank you Father Christmas):

The rose tree over, mulberries coming on, sunflowers growing, a huge patch of old raised bed rescued from the weeds and glorious sunshine for reading outside. 

Interesting fact of the week:

Everyone knows the phrase of 'make hay while the sun shines!' Great aphorism about taking opportunities whilst you can (which we certainly managed with the field - checking the forecast about six times a day became very addictive). 

This proverb is first recorded in John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546:

Whan the sunne shinth make hay. Whiche is to say.

Take time whan time cometh, lest time steale away.

Many proverbs exist in other languages, but this one doesn't and it's a reasonable surmise that the phrase is of English Tudor origin.