Back home and a jungle to face!

   I have been away from the garden for over a month. The last blog was written over five weeks ago. This is a long time to be away from ones vegetable patch especially at this time of year. From June onwards everything grows rapidly and one starts to reap the rewards of the hard work done earlier in the year. Well, I was not here. My daughter and son-in-law did a sterling job and Paul, bless him, mowed my lawn short and instead of having to spend three or four days mowing I was straight into clearing weeds and getting ground ready for winter planting.

Chili and Sweet Pepper bed

   The picture to the right shows what the beds were like. This is the chili, sweet peppers and aubergine bed. Weeds three and four feet high and this is just one bed. Having now set the scene on what the vegetable garden beds were like when I returned from my New Zealand adventure lets go back and start from where the last blog was publish, June 8th 2017.

Blacktail Mountain water melons

Vegetable spaghetti

  Back at the first week of June I was trying to get vegetable garden together for I was  going to be away for along time at the wrong time of year. I transplanted vegetable spaghetti, celeriac, Provence thyme, pruned the vine, did a little weeding and tied up tomatoes.Then I left. I returned to work on my vegetable garden on the 15th July. That day I dug Anais potatoes, cut cabbage (oh wonderful fresh cabbage!) and the inevitable tying up of tomatoes. On the 16th a lamb was born. I collected coriander seed, parsnip and horse radish seed. Cut another cabbage. On the 17th I start to weed in earnest. Dug up the shallots, weeded my large squash patch and weeded the 5 Desert melon patch. Now we really get going. I planted out savoy cabbage (for the winter), lettuce and weeded the rhubarb bed, tided up the manure heap (the chickens had made a right mess!) and weeded the rhubarb bed. The weather, much to my relief, turned cooler. That meant I could attack things with more vigour. Tied up tomatoes, dug up small onions, pulled carrots, picked a pile of tomatoes and cucumbers, planted out leeks and white winter cabbage (the sort you make cold slaw with), cleaned out the chicken and duck coops. So, what was left? The pumpkin patch for one! Lots of grass but I managed to clear it and also sowed Touchon and Long Lisse de Meaux carrot, cleared and weeded the chili plot, that is, the one in the photograph! Finally tided up the poly tunnel, sowed beetroot and champion red top swede in modules. There are still more weeds to pull and more ground to prepare for winter planting and sowing but hey I am getting there!

Chou Cabas winter cabbage

Winter leeks