Pushing up the daisies

Ah a week of holidays.
A week of rain.
Almost non stop.
The gods are against me.
Still, I did manage a few odd jobs in the garden, like the trip to the riding stables to get another boot load of horse manure. I had intended to dig that into the tomato and squash beds but that never got done because of the rain. I did manage to dig over and weed the fruit bed, and plant a new blackcurrant bush. I also managed to plant the maincrop potatoes and some new lettuce and remove the old cabbages that were starting to bolt.
And biggest surprise of all, I took some pictures.

First thing, I took this of the inside heart of an artichoke plant. You can see the baby artichoke growing in it.
And this is the fruit bed now it has been dug over, weeded and some of the annoying grass removed. You can see the new bush in the middle. The black plastic is where the strawberries are and the leafy thing on the left is chives.

This is the herb bed, rather loosely named :-) There is parsley, lemon balm, thyme and a rose bush as well as some newly planted mint, tarragon and rosemary (can't see that from here). You can see that the paths are getting the better of me...
Now this next pic is an overall view, you can see the plastic bags with the manure in them. And the tarp is covering up the tomato bed, saving me a bit of work. You can see the broad beans just behind the black bags and further down on the left hand side there are the spud and allium beds. The messy patch where the bin bags are will be dug over next week and manure-trenched in readiness for the squash and corn and melons.

Perhaps this gives a better view though:

You can see my hopeless polytunnel, the messy paths around the plot that drive me mad and the general chaos. But you can also see the nice raspberry bed that gets thicker by the day and the strawberries that are getting lots of leaves and a few flower buds. Since I took this the spud bed just near the polytunnel has been dug over and the bolting cabbage just after the tunnel on its right have been taken out. I think I shall save that bit and the bit next to it for courgettes and leeks.
Hope you have all enjoyed seeing some new pics. Hopefully in a week or two I will have decen weather so I can get down there and weed a bit more and tidy it up before planting the summer crops that are growing all over the house: I have seedlings of tomatoes, sweet pepper, red cabbage, broccoli, corn, flowers, courgettes, leeks, pumpkins and brussels, all driving my hubby mad...

Labels: artichoke, fruit, herbs, potato, spring