Pushing up the daisies

After 6 incredibly hard months plagued by personal problems and some health issues, I am back blogging. Due to these issues I have made the difficult decision of cutting back to a half plot this year. I am hoping that this will allow me to better spend my available time for gardening and have a successful crop due to more efficient car. Having to spend less time worrying about weeds, paths and such may allow me to spend more profitable time on the plot. So the moving work is going on in earnest. I have redone the strawberry bed with some help from my friend Nathalie. With quite a lot of puffing and straining I managed to unearth the gooseberry bushes, and transplant the largest one to the "new" plot (which is actually the top half of the current plot), and another one onto the edges of the site so at least birds and passerbys can eat the fruit! I left the third one for the new tenant, if he doesn't want it, I will move it too. I took 5 raspberry bushes, and there seem to be an awful lot more, more than I had put in originally in any case! I seem to remember buying 4 bushes to start with!!! Raspberries are rampant. I also dug up the grapevine and move it beside the shed, hopefully this will be a warmer spot and it may enjoy it. I can train it along the shed wall and gain some space too. So now in terms of perennials, I have 3 artichokes, 3 rhubarbs, 5 raspberries, One gooseberry, one redcurrant and a grapevine as well as a strawberry bed with about 15 strawberry plants. I have rosemary, sage, thyme, parsley and mint and hope to add basil and tarragon this season. I hope to use more successive sowing and to use catch crops such as lettuce and radish while slower growing crops grow around them. Like lettuce under the broad beans. I need now to finish the new paths using the material I recover from the far end of the plot (it is still abundant in old wood, stones and terracotta tiles which I will put to good use) and prepare a seed bed for the new sowings. A friend renovating his house has old windows, and I will try and get one of them to use for a cold frame, it would be ideal. I hope that I will have much better success this year with the seedlings, as I will be able to give them more attention. I bought in many of the new seeds, just have to get some more pumpkin seeds and I have my eye on some from Amazon and Ebay for that. Otherwise the list of crops is looking something like this: spring/summer: carrots, beetroot, lettuce, mizuna, radish, turnips, tetragone (NZ spinach), tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, peas, beans, broad beans, onions, echalote, spring onions, garlic, potatoes, cucumbers Autumn/winter: winter squash (hopefully CrownPrince and Uchiki Kuri pumpkins and butternuts), cabbages (green and red), cauliflower, parsnips, brussel sprouts, sprouting broccoli, romanesco, leeks, pakchoy, swiss chard, Jerusalem artichokes, late carrots and turnips, lamb's lettuce, rocket, mizuna also.