Sun, Salad, Strimming and Such!

Hi!

The last few days have been very busy for us. Jon has mown and strimmed the lawn and its looking just fantastic. Even the patches at the far end of the garden where the bamboo was and the place where we used to have a fire are looking wonderful now; we are sooo enjoying the garden with this wonderful weather.

We sat and had lunch at the picnic table yesterday and the addition of the brolly was perfect; we are eating salad leaves and herbs at just about every meal just now which is very satisfying.

We purchased a new strimmer and Jon has been around  the main veg patch

and the fruit patch too. I've raked it and I've decided to put membrane down and Jon will get wood chippings to go on top and this will keep the weeds down. I so wanted it to be an au natural area but the weeds are no good when you want to look after the fruit trees and bushes properly so they've gotta go.

On Saturday afternoon, again flippin' hot, I put down membrane on the floor of the greenhouse. Sweat was dripping off the end of my nose! We shovelled sand onto it and laid it level; this will do for this year then we'll set it up right in time for next Spring probably with staging and raised beds.

I know it probably isn't the traditional floor of a greenhouse but it suits me.

Oh, on Friday and Saturday I received some parcels in the post. I've been filling in some online surveys (won't be doing it any more as I seemed to be getting lots of spam email) and decided to cash in my £15 Amazon reward voucher. I went for the Sarah Rainey 3-ingredient baking book - there are lots of things in it I am going to try -  along with Frances Tophill's First Time Gardener. The latter is a lovely book with different chapters of interest and not just about sowing and growing, which for me is a change. I also chose some cute macaron-design writing paper to use when writing to my pen pals.

On Saturday the things I ordered with my letter voucher from Grow Your Own Magazine courtesy of Thompson and Morgan came. 

I went for some spray weed killer - I know some people don't like to use it but I need this for some small areas around the sleepers of my veg beds. I also bought rubber tops for bamboos canes to prevent poking my eyes out,

and some fly papers to hang in both the greenhouse and poly house. I ordered my sweet potato slips which will be here by the end of the month and to plant these in I bought four growing bags. Finally I treated myself to a fantastic Kent and Stowe trowel which is pure quality and just feels lovely in your hand, very posh I am with this and my RHS gloves!

On Friday I tied the front door rose back a bit and its in flower and already looking lovely.

Yesterday afternoon I took up a few spuds because one came up by accident when I was earthing up so wanted to check progress. I brought these in...

I'm now in a slight state of anxiety as when I took up the spuds on a couple of the plants there were a couple which were mushy. All the leaves are fine, no blackening and looking extremely healthy so fingers crossed that the rest will be ok, even though there are so yellow bolting-like looking flowers.... Hope my spud campaign hasn't finished before its started.

Here are the Robin chicks; they are growing and often seen with their little mouths open wide ready for food.

The sunflowers,

supermarket-bought lettuces potted on and

 

broccoli seedlings are all doing well. I plan on putting the latter in the spot where I'll be taking up the first early spuds.

Well I think that's my update done; the weather is forecast to be the same as recently until Thursday when we hope to get just a little bit of rain.

Hope everybody else is enjoying their gardens.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx