How does your garden grow?

A month on from my last garden tour and things have changed somewhat.  The last six weeks have been a real mix of weather but mostly the temperatures have been cool (low teens centigrade, mid fifties fahrenheit) with lots of rain.  The rain is great but the low temperatures has meant that those plants in the garden that like it to be a bit warmer have been growing rather slowly.  The polytunnel is largely unaffected by the lower temperatures during the day although a lack of sunshine means it is cooler in there at night.

The nasturtiums which were hiding behind the now finished lupins, are doing well and providing lots of flowers for our salads.  In a previous year we have sown pansies or maybe they are violets in this bed and they have self seeded or come back - I am not a very good flower gardener, can you tell!  Anyway what ever they are they are also being added to salads.  The honeysuckle is also in flower and provides a heady scent whenever you walk past.

The herb bed has exploded there is absolutely no space in here at all which is what I have been trying to achieve for years.  There are chives, marjoram, salad burnet, yarrow, purple sage and comfrey in here, many of these are now flowering which the bees are loving.  The yarrow was planted in here and is not a weed as far as I am concerned.  I am cultivating it to make salves, yarrow salve is a native alternative to arnica cream and can be used for all the same things, it is even better though as it can be used on broken skin.  The leaves in the pot on the right hand side are my horseradish plants which have been potted up to this large pot in the hope it will encourage some bigger roots, they have been a bit thin and pathetic in the last couple of years.  This bed is also full of wild strawberry plants which are growing in every available space but as they are low they are not visible in this photo except above the chives where they are growing along a wall which you can't even see that separates the herb bed from the one above.

In the bed above the herbs are my sunflowers and until earlier this week 25 french bean plants that were in flower and about to set fruit.  Something, possibly a rabbit, has come in and eaten the lot, I am left with the stalks and not a shred of greenery.  This was my best crop of bean plants to date, so I am rather devastated by this massacre.  We have no idea where the rabbits are getting in to the garden as it is completely rabbit proofed, if indeed it is a rabbit, they haven't eaten anything else, yet.  The wire is now 18 years old and is rusty in places, we have checked the entire fence for holes but we may have missed the one that they are using!  I am hoping that they don't come back and start on my other plants any time soon.

In the cage behind the blackcurrants are now ready for picking, that is this weekends job, and the white currants are nearly there.  They are usually a few weeks behind.

The broad beans are doing well, we have had a few meals from them so far along with the Jerusalem artichokes which are not ready yet.  In between are some onions that I grew from seed which are not going  growing that well.  This was a bit of an experiment as I have never tried growing onion from seed, I think I will stick to onion sets in the future, I don't think my growing season is long enough to grow from seed.  To the left of the broad beans are purple sprouting broccoli plants, protected to stop butterflies laying their eggs on the leaves which they then decimate.  The rhubarb is also continuously producing, I gave a friend a few pounds at the beginning of the week but you wouldn't know, there is still several pounds worth of stalks on there.  I am going to start freezing it now, as we can't keep up with it.

Inside the polytunnel it is a bit of jungle and not terribly tidy!  The courgettes at the back are providing us with a steady supply, we haven't reached glut stage yet, if the temperatures stay low then that is unlikely.  My tomato plants have yet to flower, I think this may be a no tomato year, I don't think it is warm enough even in here for them.  The cucumbers and gherkins are growing well, we have harvested a few cucumbers now and there are many more on their way.  The salad bed continues to provide a daily salad for us all, some of the plants have flowers, hence the mass of yellow flowers, I don't usually pull them up until all their leaves have been eaten.  There are also three squash plants which have all fruited and I hope that they give us a few fruits by the end of the season.

My herbs are fantastic this year, I sow them every year and then they get neglected as I run out of time to deal with them.  This year, with being at home most of the time I have been able to provide them the attention that they need.  I am going start drying the holy basil so that I can use it for herbal teas over the winter.  I have also sown some more lettuce and salad leaves to give us a continuous supply for the months ahead.

The garlic is almost ready to harvest, I am hoping that we have lots of good healthy bulbs under the ground.  It is always a bit of a lottery growing garlic as you never know what is going on under there!  It is however something that is pretty reliable for me, and the recent rain will have helped those bulbs to swell.

Next to the garlic are some cabbage plants, again under fleece like the broccoli.  I have found this works until it is too cold for the butterflies and then I take it off to give the plants a bit more room.  You can also see our wee apple tree in this picture, we grafted this ourselves at the beginning of last year when it was about 6 inches high.  It has grown well and we are going to train it to grow along the wires on the wall to be an espalier.

So that is my garden, I share the progress again next month and hope that the rabbit doesn't return and I have something to show you!