First two weeks of June 2017

Cucumber arch

They survived! This week saw the cucumbers graduate from the kitchen, to the plot, and they are still alive 3 days later hehe. It was definitely worth bringing them inside to recover. I am unsure how behind they are now but time will tell. They have been planted at the foot of the arch we used for the pumpkins last year. Although there were some cucumbers on the arch last year too, they just got shaded out and couldn't compete with the pumpkins. The squashes and pumpkins are growing on the ground this year instead, eek! Two melon plants were in amongst the ITC plants so they also graduated to a spot on the plot. I have popped them in on plot A near the composting area. They will (hopefully) trail over the tarpaulin that is still covering the back half of the plot. It will remain there until we are ready to plant the fruit trees in the winter. Hopefully the heat from the tarp will benefit the plant. They are both really tiny though so I am not expecting miracles! 

Leeks

I popped the leeks in today too, earlier than I had written in my planning but there was a gap so I popped them in anyway. I knew my plans would change as I learned true timings and spacing rather than relying on info from books. But I think I am going to have to do some really big rethinks next season. I had originally planned to pop the leeks in when the peas started to come out, but the peas are a huge mass/jungle so there is no way that would be doable. It will make more sense for the leeks to follow the broad beans but that means re jigging lots of other crops. It is the same with covering with netting, I have ended up covering crops like onions because they are planted beetween the brassicas and it was easier to cover the lot. Trouble is I don't have enough netting to cover unnessacarily.......it looks like I will be starting the plan from scratch really but hey, this is half the fun right? The planning.......... 

On a positive note the sweetcorn is looking really great, I was very worried when we had really strong winds for days after planting out, but it seems to have survived with no scars.

I am very excited about the harvesting that is now happening, the Bijou mange tout are amazing, so tasty and a heavy cropper, infact I return home with a bowl full of sugar snaps, mange tout and peas on every visit. I have also harvested  masses of Wizard beans. I was so wrong about them and I will 100% sow this variety next year, I have decides to only do over winter ones though,  it will be plenty for the amount we eat and it will free up 4ft that I plan to use to grow peas just for seed saving.

We also have PARSNIPS, phew, I was really unsure if we would ended up with any, but after resowing every week or so, we have plenty, a long way off harvest but I can already taste them!

Parsnip

We had our first ever beetroot harvest, something I was very much looking forward to as I failed miserably last year. I thought they kept getting munched by slugs but after a little research it turns out they are a favourite target for sparrows! This years crop was undercover and hey presto, we have beets. They taste divine and the boys (who hate beetroot) can't get enough of it grated raw with carrot! Speaking of which, a small bunch of baby carrots came home today too. They were probably too small to harvest really but we each had one with dinner. I felt like a real kitchen gardener harvesting my carrots. I enjoyed pulling them and seeing what was hiding underground, some woohoo-ing may have happened and these were just small Chantenay, so goodness knows what I will be like with the big old maincrops haha! I will be doubling the space for both of these crops if I can next season. I think they are my favourite early summer harvest actually!  Two cauliflower heads came home with me too and most is now in the freezer, I am chuffed as cauliflower is known to be tricky so I wasn't expecting it to actually produce heads! It shows we should always give it a go. There is only one crop that is rubbish actually and that is the radish. I could not grow it last year and this year seems no better. I have no idea what is going wrong, they just don't bulk up. Maybe it is the amount of flea beetle damage but as it is one of my favourite veg it is getting rather frustrating. Maybe I ought to try  growing them in a planter and see if that helps........
We are now finally starting to properly look at the fruit area of the plot. Spurred on by the Mr putting up netting to protect our blackcurrants, the next step will be putting cardboard and compost down in the fruit cage before errecting support structures for fruit canes inside and the fruit trees behind. Now to decide what we actually want to plant there hehe.

Bijou