Turn your back...

   Another week dashes by. Here we are in the middle of June. Well, least here in my part of the world we are being allowed to move around a bit. I have been shopping for the first time in over three months. Not a lot of difference other than most people wearing masks and one metre space markers at the checkouts. The checkouts staff are protected by sheets of what I guess is clear plastic sheeting. Anyway I digress.

    The weather has been mostly kind. A little sun, a little rain, not to hot, not to cold.  Not too much of anything to stop stuff growing. In fact it has been perfect growing weather which of course includes the weeds and the grass! So the week has been taken up with weeding, tying up tomatoes, digging up new potatoes (variety AGATA), pulling the odd lettuce and oh yes I nearly forgot planting out Black Mountain water melons. A friend has given me a load of well rotted horse manure. Ideal for a water melon bed. Dig a hole fill with horse muck and chopped up comfrey (good green manure comfrey), mix it all up cover with old roofing felt, cut holes for the plant and a plant pot (used to water the melon) and hey presto one has a water melon bed. Melons love to have warm roots. The photo show two out of the three beds I have made. A forth plant I have to put out I think I am going to put in the poly tunnel. Never grown a water melon in the poly tunnel before. 

   The haricot bed has not been doing as well as I would have expected. I suspect part of it is because of old seed. Anyway gaps in the haricot verte and barlotti rows resowed and another two rows of each sown to hopefully get some succession of the crop. More gaps in the sweet corn bed. Do not know what is going on there for sure. Also the sweet corn bed has now been completly sown.The tomatoes are looking good. Strong, currently healthly plants with first truss flowers starting to show. I have transplanted Mamouth Leaf basil inbetween tomato plants in some of the beds. The tomatoes in the poly tunnel are half as big again as the outside ones. Only the one bush tomato outside has fruit on it  so far. The summer cabbage looks good with my new variety Glory of Enkhuisen living up to the seed notes in that they are going to be HUGE! Winter bassicas looking good. They are enjoying the cooler and wetter days that is for sure. My Champion of England red top swede looks well establish and they to have been enjoying the cooler, wetter conditions. New potatoes are doing well with some twelve and a half kilograms of potatoes dug up so far. Worth about forty two euros if you had to buy them in the shops here in France. (My AGATA seed potatos for 1.5kg cost 4 euros 70 cents.)

   On the chicken front the chicks are growing fast and we will soon be able to see whether we have hens or cockerels. Egg laying is averaging six a day. 

   So on we go!