The Little Things

Time for an update on the little things. First off I had to look very carefully but eventually managed to spy some tiny broad beans! There are loads of flowers on the plants but they kept dropping off. I think this was down to the awfully wet, windy weather we've been experiencing. I'm assuming it stopped the bees coming out and hanging around our beans, thus the flowers were simply wasted.

A Tiny weeny broad bean

Staying with the rainy weather I thought it would be the undoing of our first courgette. However, it seems to be ok, even though there was no male flower open at the time. It's growing well and got a little sister too.

Courgette growing well with little sister

There are two apple trees in our garden being trained along wires as
'espaliers'. One tree still has its label on which says it's an Egremont Russet. I suspect the other is too.
Earlier in the spring I gave both trees a good pruning (too good I think as I my have removed some of the fruit spurs!). Anyway, a few flowers duly came and cheered me up and now, in between the leaves, are baby apples! Hooray!

There are a few little apples on our two trees

Carrying on the fruit theme, the strawberry patch now had had mesh put over it. Hopefully this will prevent attacks from squirrels and pigeons. Grrr.

The strawberries have some protection at last

Nearly open!

My first courgette flower is nearly open! It's definitely a female one as you can see the little courgette on the stalk just below the flower. Hopefully the weather will get a bit better over the next few days, allowing it to open fully and also bring on some of the male flowers.

Female courgette flower, nearly open!

Two types of lettuce, Little Gem and Lollo Rosso

My tray of lettuces are doing well. I really must get the salad planter done so that these can go out into a bigger area ready for the beautiful warm sunshine we are bound to have. We must be owed it after days and days of nothing but wind and rain.

It Worked!

My new cucumbers have germinated! The packet said seedlings should appear in 3-5 days. I must admit I was sceptical. However after three days all four seeds have come good - so good in fact that I've had to get a bigger lid on my home made propagator! I'm going to leave them in there now for a few more days.

Germinated cucumbers in my home made propagator

Other News
This is the view of the potato patch. I've earthed them up twice but still they grow like things possessed! Maybe I'll do it one more time and then leave them alone. As for the ones in containers, they are full to the brim with earth so not a lot of choice with those!

Potatoes growing well

I have transplanted the best French Beans into their own individual pots (bottom of picture), along with 6 bell pepper plants (top-right). There is also one tomato plant which has not been used yet. The whole internet gardening fraternity seems to have gone mad on 'upside down tomatoes'. Here is another link. I may have a go at this - I've not decided yet, but it would be a shame to waste the plant by not doing anything with it.

French beans (bottom) and peppers (top right)

Cucumbers revisited

One of the first vegetable seeds we sowed in Matt's Patch were cucumbers. Now, I've never had much luck with growing cucumbers. The last time I tried I think we got one small cucumber before the plants decided to go to the big allotment in the sky.

This year I managed to get three seedlings growing and since I planted them in a growbag two have died. My luck with cucumbers continues.

So, with my enthusiasm still intact, I decided to get some more seeds on the go quickly. Yesterday I looked through all the different types of cucumber in the local seed shop. I've decided to go for an all female variety called Aurelia F1. They should be less trouble as one does not need to keep picking off the male flowers which is what I'll have to do with my remaining plant from the previous effort (Telegraph). I felt this new packet was quite expensive at £2 for 4 seeds, but then again, cucumbers are about a pound each in the supermarkets.

Reading the back it seems like they're quite demanding with regards to temperature, at least to start with. So to give them every chance I made a little propagator from a plastic strawberry punnet which I recovered from the recycling bin - better to reuse than recycle! I taped up most of the air holes on the top, leaving two open for a little ventilation. It's now sitting on the window sill in the conservatory. Please work!

Following on from my experiment where I germinated French beans in damp kitchen roll, I planted the sprouting beans in compost mixed with a little sand. This is what I was greeted with this morning - loads of beans all rising up out of the earth. I've counted over 20 which is a much better success rate. This is definitely the way to go!

Beans: Broad but short!

Last year, in our old garden, we grew runner beans. They did very well, producing loads of beans but growing very tall, as they do. It's common knowledge that beanstalks grow very tall. In fact I recall one book I've read where the beanstalk reaches into the clouds. Even our little girls are aware of this documented occurrence!

Anyway, with this in mind, when choosing our broad beans I picked a dwarf variety (Sutton).
As you may have read previously, these have been planted out now. However they have not got very tall at all. So I did a bit of research and normal broad beans only grow to about 3ft any way! And I've got dwarf ones! 1.5ft - that's how high mine will get!

Well, they should still do well - they're in flower at the moment so hopefully will not be long before we get some proper produce from Matt's Patch (lettuce excluded).

One thing that has gone completely mad are the potatoes. I've earthed over the ones in the corner of the garden and as for the ones in the containers - they seem to be growing by a couple of inches a day, particularly the Red Duke of York. As soon as they get covered over, they've broken through again be the next morning! I hope they are growing equally well under the soil.