Week 6 in the gardens

It's been a beautiful sunny week leading up to the longest day so the gardens are all preparing for productivity! The CC household are contemplating stopping the veg box order for the summer with the prospect of spicy salad leaves, chard and spinach, sugar snap peas and potatoes all begin being harvested in the next week.

The Coombe cottage garden 'allotment' triangle has switched from blues and purples and pinks to a lovely dapled pattern of green and tiny white flowered towers of peas, feverfew and foliage.

Best plants of the week have been 

1. The mixed sweet peas ( sown 18 January inside - Frangatissima, Turquoise lagoon and Purple Pimpernel as well as a few unannmed saved sed from 2014) We started picking this week, and the scent is fantastic. We are planning to give a bunch away every other day.

2. The night stocks  ( sewn 1 March and planted out 26 April)  are beginning to bloom - we'd thought they would be white but have come through beautifully pink, white and purple. We can't bear to pick them yet!

3. The bright star-white flowers of love in-the-mist - the contrast between the green frondy foliage and the white is even better than the traditional blue.

4. The cutting patch is coming along nicely with the alliums finally beginning to burst at the front and the sunflowers at the back starting the spurt to the sky phase of their lives. The technique of planting in a trench which you then earth up to give more support seems to be working alongside the new support canes and wires. 

Casualties have been few this week - black flies are continuing to really plague the beans, and are now even spreading through the feverfew and bolted spinach. We are continuing to knock them off with a hose. We really need to plant earlier in the year. 

And are those alliums going to burst? They've been at the point of flowering for nearly 6 weeks! 

The orchard allottment

S returned from her French meanderings to a mega-weeding week and now the cutting patch is coming along well. There look to be lots of lovely self sewn flowers from last year coming through. The summer palace was celebrated by book group with a balmy summer evening without any insects swarming! 

Best plants are those amazing carrots again- we swear they've put on 6 inches in a week, 

the bright orange of the calendula, and the fantastically fruitful loganberries and blueberries.

Difficulties are with the gypsophilia-n-bean-eating rabbits. However s and r are finding the organic repellant they applied before going (liquid fence) may be working after all our doubts. 

Fact of the week: For centuries, carrots have been connected with health benefits. In the Middle Ages, carrots were believed to cure anything from sexually transmitted diseases to snakebites. Carrots became associated with vision, particularly night vision, during World War II. The British Royal Air Force published a story that said skilled fighter pilot John "Cats' Eyes" Cunningham could thank a steady diet of carrots for his night vision flying prowess. In response to the story, many British people began to grow and eat more carrots. They wanted to improve their vision so that they could see better during the compulsory blackouts that were common during World War II. Although Cats' Eyes' carrot eating made for a great story, it was, in fact, propaganda put out to conceal the fact that the Royal Air Force's was actually using radar to locate Luftwaffe bombers during the night.

Week 4 in the Garden

News from The Orchard 

It's been a hard and cold week. S and R are going away for 10 days and are hoping for a turn around in the weather and the growth whilst they are away hunting down vintage costumes in France...

Rabbit attack on all the beans. This has never happened before and it's difficult to think of humane or reasonable strategies to make them go away.  R and S are trying 'liquid fence ' which is organic and safe for people pets and plants but is meant to repel by its scent. We suspect it doesn't work...

Weeds are sadly overtaking the flowers. The worst one looks like a low slung thistle. S suspects the weeds are worse this year because of rotavating so it's going to be black plastic or back to digging over next winter. 

The Sweet Williams are ready for picking - still beautiful big pink and red heads.

Aphids are still plaguing the apple tree and being harvested by ants - soapy water seems to be relatively unsuccesful but the apples themselves look ok and it's just deforming the leaves. 

All the sweet peas have been munched in the orchard by slugs but they are ok at home as the plants are stronger and the organic pellets seem to help. 

And news from the Combe cottages flower gardens...

Despite the cold week we've had some successes and the garden looks pretty good.

Highlights are: 

The amazing dahlias are now sticking up their little leaves 

(and only a few have been munged so far)

Slug patrolling  is doing well - 50 found and squashed last night. (For this technique you need one very bright torch, a pair of gloves, heavy shoes/wellies and a strong stomach! You need to go out between 11 and midnight, use the torch to spot them, pick them up and squash! Disrupting the soil around where the slug has been I think also makes sure no one uses the trail again ....) 

The front of the house is a treat!

Sweet peas are looking possibly the best ever. We sewed them in February in loo rolls - a mixture of saved seeds, 

Lovely white and black dot flowers on the broad beans

The golden Rose on the front of the house has been in full flower all week.

And lovely pinks in pots

The failures and sadnesses this week

Burning the fireblight tree - although 2 small boys did have beans and sausages on the campfire building up to it. Other apple tree beginning to fruit and looks very healthy.... Let's hope the blight has not spread. 

So much black fly on the broad beans ... I'm trying just spraying them off with the hose after pinching out the tops. 

Interesting fact of the week

The term "fire blight" describes the appearance of the disease, which can make affected areas appear blackened, shrunken and cracked, as though scorched by fire.