Blue pipes

This Spring has certainly put hold onto many of the foodstuffs we are trying to grow this year. What a bore! There’s hardly any sunshine. And whenever there is some, it’s blowing Nordic gales that make you shiver and put on an extra layer! No wonder our seedlings did so poorly this year and the plants have hardly progressed from babies to juveniles in the past few weeks 🙁 Our brassicas, tomatoes and peppers are doing terribly for this time of the year…

It’s all very well for those who have posh poly-tunnels with subtropics temperatures (Bill Leadbetter!), and who are by now harvesting their second crop of the year.. but us poor lot…

Anyhow… and on a positive note: our potatoes are doing well at the allotment AND at home (Charlottes in grow-bags for easy and quick reach&cook); red onions and garlic are not far from harvesting, Jerusalem artichokes are pocking through and our strawberries are setting fruit, successfully saved from slugs and snails with tree shreddings around the base of the raised beds as well as broken up egg shells (as per the advice of our horticultural garden-proud neighbour). Raspberries are doing swimmingly well and broad beans and peas have not been interfered with so far by mice or birds, which is good news too. And the gooseberries and blackcurrants are all bearing a modest amount of green fruit, hopefully ready for us to taste later in the year for the first time.

Today was the weeding and watering time. Apple, pear and plum trees have all been de-flowered to get them establish better in the next couple of years. I notices that the Russet apple tree has somewhat dried out and lost all its flower and leaf :(. Hopefully some brutally heavy pruning as well as 30 litres of water will get it on its way to recovery… I love Russets…

Courgettes, squashes and butternut squashes went in today too for the first time… Some under plastic bottle cover, some not (plastic bottle shortage, especially since all soft drinks are banned in our house – wine and real English beer only please :)). Will be interesting to see how much difference the cover makes!

Other experiments in the past two weeks involved preserving and scattering over the soil used up coffee grounds, which apparently repel slugs AND nourishes the soil, as well as saving citrus peel to scatter over the garden to deter cats + to make a water-based insecticide, which we are yet to give a go to.

One last thing – Malc got some blue piping off ebay a week ago and have successfully installed it as supports for netting, saving on expensive fruit cage structures which take ages to mount! All we need now is netting to fit over them! 🙂