Solstice report

We are not going to do very well for fruit this year, I fear.  We had lots of blossom, but the high winds earlier in June have blown off all the baby fruits.  I think we will do all right for apples and maybe the morello cherries, but there's not much left on the other trees.  A small number of sweet cherries, one plum that I can see, no pears or peaches.  And not many black currants for some reason, although the red and white currants are looking quite well-endowed.  And we should be fine for raspberries and even gooseberries.  The blueberry plants got busried under a wilderness of grass.  I've cut the grass back and we dug some rhododendron feed in around them - blueberries like quite acidic soil.  So no fruit this year, but I am hopeful of next (assuming I remember to feed them again in the autumn and spring.

We were beginning to despair of the cabbages and cauliflowers.  They were doing absolutely nothing at all.  The cabbages showed a slight tendency to heart, but nothing very exciting.  So we began eating them anyway.  The leaves were nice and tasty, just not very prolific.  But now - the cauliflowers are finally flowering and we are getting very tasty small caulis from them.  And the cabbages are finally, finally hearting properly.  They're still on the small side but I don't think they're going to get much bigger.  Well, they're definitely not going to get much bigger because we're eating them!!!!

We are doing extremely well for carrots.

And I have taken to growing the saladings in the wooden boxes The Builder made for me a couple of years back.  They're in the driveway along the house wall and the wall dividing us from next door.  We've also inherited the wooden boxes The Builder made for Barb.  She has no further use for them.  I am using them to grow pea shoots and pak choi and basil and lettuces.  I've got tumbling tomatoes in the hanging baskets by the back door.  It's so much easier to keep them watered and safe from slugs and snails in the boxes.  And so much easier to harvest them in the mornings when I'm doing the lunches.

Kudos to Tozer seeds, by the way.  I ordered 500g of pea seeds at lunch time on Friday.  They arrived in the Saturday morning post.  And were accompanied by a complimentary packet of purple basil seeds.  I was deeply impressed.  The Builder is going to plant the peas up on the allotment this afternoon.  I shall press him to make me another wooden box to plant the basil seeds in!!

You remember the poor orange tree, frozen to death in the greenhouse over the winter?  I went to pull it up this weekend so I could prepare the ground for a replacement.  Seems it's not dead after all.  It's shooting again from just above the graft.  A dilemma.  Will be years before it grows properly again.  But it seems a bit harsh to rip out a plant that is doing its damnedest to survive!

I have a problem taking the solstice photos this year.  We've replaced the window with one that doesn't open outwards!  I am going to have to be more inventive when I get home this evening