Busy month

The lack of posts in the last week or two does not signify that nothing is happening! The weather has been warm, hot at times, with sufficient rain to keep everything growing like mad after the early spring.

There's been a flurry of sowing, planting out weeding, cutting down, digging over to make more space... And  while we have just a few hours a day to get out there nature has 24 hours to do its stuff!

We generally start things off in the greenhouse or conservatory, sowing seeds or beans into suitably sized pots, modules or trays. This brings them on quickly and avoids frost damage. It also reduces predation from slugs, weevils etc. The exception to this is potatoes (obviously!) and broad beans. The broad beans seem to be very resilient. This year we planted 30 in the ground and 30 in pots in the conservatory and planted out later. All the beans germinated (saved from last year's harvest) but now there's no difference between the pot-sown and soil-sown plants.

Here's a few photos of recent activity:

Sweet peas and french beans on the "wigwams", potatoes, broad beans.

Young beetroot. Grown in modules and planted out into the raised bed.

Broad bean flowers. The bees are busy there.

Young marrow plants installed in the vegetable plot. Lots of compost from
 our mature heap went on first.

We've also planted out 72 baby leeks in the bed by the greenhouse.