This year I started an orgaic veggie patch in earnest. Corn is now gently swaying in the breeze, along with dozens of tomato plants bearing scores of green fruit, which I hope will ripen. [ I'm having a competition to see which toms do best, the greenhouse plants or the outdoor ones]
I successfull harvested the beets, cooked and pickled them, and ended up with 3 jars of produce. So what that my other half complained they were hard! I'm a gardener, [of sorts!] not a cook!
I stupidly planted 30 lettuce out at once. It was heartbreaking. The were so big it took 2 weeks to eat one, meanwhile the rest suddenly contracted some weird disease and literally reduced themselves to soggy, slimey heaps! Meanwhile the chinese cabbage morphed overnight from healthy plants to pock marked carcasses, which suddenly went to seed. Most mysterious.
This,however, was offset by my peas! Even though the slugs went to town on the leaves, the pods survived and I gathered a bowl and a half of the most beautiful tasting peas! Niavely, I then dug the plants up thinking they were finished. I found out from Gardeners World that you are supposed to keep picking the peas to keep them coming. I also wondered if the effort of growing them from seed, potting them on, planting them out, not to mention watering and weeding, had been worth the bowl and a half of peas!
The serious stress though, has been the cabbage. Row after row of nursed and beloved greenhouse raised plants have been ravished as soon as they hit the veggie patch. I thought it was the slugs and spent hours surrounding the plants with grit, eggshells and all things prickly. To no avail. An open day at the allotments informed me otherwise. [Amazingly, a trip to the allotments is now my idea of fun!]
The culprit was the cabbage white butterfly. I was told I had to net my plants to keep them out. This created problems for me. Firstly, my veggie patch is in the front garden, so I wanted it to look pretty, and netting is ugly, and secondly, I had seen so few butterflies this year I was now enjoying a garden full of cabbage whites. After much consideration, I planted the rest of the cabbages out and offered them up, without resentment, as butterfly food.
I'm still optimistic re my carrots, swedes, parsnips and spuds. I am aware of the carrot fly problem, but haven't met any yet. I just might manage a Christmas dinner.
We have a new visiter to our gardens!Yesterday, the blackbirds were shrieking, so I wandered around the garden clapping, thinking it was a cat. To my surprise, a large, beautifully coloured bird flew at great speed straight out of the apple tree, almost colliding with me. As it sped off it dropped two wood pigeon chicks [dead] almost on my head. I looked it up and discovered it was a kestrel. It truly was a magnificent bird!
Talking of birds, a few times of late I've noticed huge birds soaring so high I can't make out what they are. Surely eagles have't arrived in the North West of England?.........
T
