Thursday, May 17, 2018

Soft fruits


In my back garden, I filled a narrow bed with strawberries and raspberries (see here). The strawberries here have never done especially well, despite flowering quite well every year. However, the raspberries have been great, and I've discovered that if you leave a couple of last year's stems you get some bonus summer fruit too. Last year I added a loganberry to the middle of this bed, grown as a cutting by my Dad. It didn't do much last year, but now it's covered in flowers, and the bees were loving it today. Once the fruit appear, I'll bring down the netting to keep the birds off, but for now they're doing a great jobs of pest control so they have free access.



Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Sowing more carrots

The carrots that I sowed a few weeks ago have not been a massive success - maybe 4 or 5 have germinated. But I can't see any of the landcress or rocket that I sowed at the same time either. I wonder if they were affected by the very cold snap of weather between the hot spells? Anyway, I thought I'd sow some more, but this time I've put them in toilet rolls ready to plant out when they're bigger. There are a few shoots beginning to show on the kale and mangetout, so I've covered them in netting to keep the birds/mice away.