Early June update

Being a gardener requires a certain amount of patience. Well, quite a lot of patience, really. In my garden now lots of lovely veggies are growing, and I keep thinking "Do I need to be out there doing stuff?", but the answer is "No". The plants just need time to grow. So I do the odd bit of weeding (a never-ending task which I approach on a little-and-often basis), the odd bit of watering, and the odd bit of tying-in, but on the whole it's a relatively easy time of year. I'm just going to show you a few pics of how things are getting on.

There are three nice strong rows of Parsnips:

"Tender and True" at left; others are "Duchess"

Next to the Parsnips are the Broad Beans. The tall ones are "Masterpiece Green Longpod" and "De Monica", while the short ones are "Robin Hood".

You can see some of the tomato plants in the terracotta-coloured pots in the background, next to the house. (Beside those lovely picturesque wheelie-bins!). Here they are in more detail:

The first Broad Bean pods are beginning to appear amongst the brown dead flowers. I'm anxiously scanning the plants to judge how many pods there are going to be. Not every flower gets pollinated, and the un-pollinated ones just wither and die without producing a pod.

At the Fleet Food Festival last Sunday I bought these two herb plants. One is a Black Pepper Mint, and the other is a Tricolour Sage.

The Sage is primarily for ornament - hence the glazed pot - but the Mint is for culinary use, so it gets the utilitarian black plastic pot!


I potted the Mint in home-made compost, which is very rich and moist. I think the plant will enjoy this, and hopefully it will grow rapidly. My other Mint (The Moroccan type) is not doing very well this year; it's a bit weak and unenthusiastic for some reason.

An attack by a couple of cunningly-camouflaged green caterpillars of some sort didn't help. It's amazing how much damage one caterpillar can do before you spot him...


Brassicas in the foreground.

Climbing Beans:

Another general view, with the Salads bed in the foreground.

I have Lettuces at various different stages of development. This "Little Gem" is beginning to heart-up.

Down the other end of the bed I have some smaller ones of various sorts, and a couple of Chicories (top left of photo below).

Carrots under the Enviromesh. My Carrots haven't germinated so well this year, and I had to re-sow some thin patches.

The chillis are looking a lot happier since I put them into the bigger pots. There is lots of new growth on this "Ring of Fire" one, which is just beginning to branch-out.

Potatoes - even more luxuriant than ever!

Herbs. The flowering ones in the foreground are Thyme.

This is Leaf Celery, running to seed now, and producing some very thick stalks. I'm going to let it flower so that I can save the seeds.

 Even the pears are looking hopeful. I have seven little clusters like this:

So the message is that I have lots to look forward to, though nothing very much to harvest just yet - apart from salad.