Late May

And, of course, the second I had bought tomato seedlings - the seeds started to germinate!  I now have loads of tiny seedlings and I don't know what they are because all the labels fell off after I had given up on them :-S

We planted seeds of courgettes, melons, watermelons, pumpkins, Brussels sprouts, sweet corn, white sprouting broccoli, runner beans, French beans, more carrots and some mixed flowers about 3 weeks ago. These have all germinated well apart from the French beans and the pumpkins.  The pumpkins may yet come along but only 3 of the French beans have appeared.  The sprouting broccoli is also not doing all that well - but that was down to a snail attack before we remembered to protect against snails and slugs.

The runner beans are now out in the garden, accompanied by some seeds that have been sown directly. The tumbling tomato seeds are now in their hanging baskets and swinging gently from the grape vine trellis. And the fuchsias which we cut back to the stalk and overwintered in the greenhouse are re-shooting and are now hung back on the side of the house.

We planted 25 new asparagus plants two weeks ago. Three of them are in the old asparagus bed where the plants had failed. The rest are in the new bed. And all of them have now come up which is, I think, the best result we've ever had with asparagus! We are hopeful these will settle in and thrive.  We are not eating from the plants we put in last year, but the established plants are doing very well.  Since the weather warmed up and the sun came out we are getting three, four or five spears a day, occasionally more.

The flower garden is looking beautiful. The planted flowers and weeds and self sown flowers are mostly now meshing in well together and sorting themselves out.  Even the alpine strawberries are being kept under some sort of control! We need to do a bit of weeding of the grass, but the rest, even the dandelions, all looks good.

I am hopeful that there will be more planting and seed sowing this weekend. I think we can safely plant up the greenhouses on the allotment now (where the peas, broad beans and potatoes all seem to be doing well)

Click on the garden to reach the photo album of the garden in May

The allotment as of today

The garden as of today