I love making and eating salads which is
why I have dedicated ¾ of a bed in the polytunnel towards lettuce leaves. I
think that this is probably too much for me to eat on my own. I have eaten
salad almost every day for the past month and there is still loads left, I
haven’t made a dent. The picture below is lunch and dessert from my garden: lettuce and spring onions went into a salad, and the rhubarb I cooked with some lemon juice and sugar and added in some yoghurt. Yum yum.
I weeded out the nasturtiums, which were
mainly growing amongst the tomatoes, and put them in to flower pots. They have
started to flower already, which will be a lovely addition to my salads. They
are the most interestingly shaped flowers, and come in all sorts of oranges,
yellows, and reds.
You may remember that I planted the
tomatoes out too early as there was cold snap and they nearly died. Well they
have slowly made a comeback with most of them looking healthy and I am hoping
they will start be flowering soon. I had a few tomato plants left inside so I
made a new tomato bed in the smaller polytunnel. Until recently I had been
growing sacred basil, also known as Tulsi, inside the house but I had a chance
to plant some of these outside to live amongst the tomato plants.
The grape vine in the smaller polytunnel
has produced many inflorescences. There will be tons of grapes around by the
end of the summer so maybe I should figure out how to make wine.
The perpetual spinach and parsley, which
were planted last year in the big polytunnel have bolted and are producing
loads of flowers and their pollen is everywhere. As has the rocket. They have all been so prolific I had to
cut down quite a few of the flower stalks as they could not support their own
weight and were flopping over. Great food for all the insects though. The spinach has not been doing great, and I
think it is a bit stressed as it has already started growing inflorescences. I
have taken a few leaves here and there to eat but I’m a bit worried about them.
The peas are still amazing. Already I have
been collecting pea pods off them and adding them to my dinner. I like to
blanch them and add them to the top of my salad. They are so sweet and
delicious, I am very proud of them.
As most of my cucumbers and courgettes were
eaten by slugs, I brought the remaining ones inside to recover and plants a few
more seeds. Since then they have come along nicely and have been big enough to
plant in the polytunnel. I made some slug traps with beer in them around the
little plants as I was told thing is a good method of killing them off. I hope
it works but as extra prevention, I have added crushed eggshells around them
too.
The beans. My poor beans that were outside
have been completely eaten but now I have more beans which grew up so quickly.
I have them outside in the polytunnel at the moment until they are big enough
to go into their patch outside.
I have been re-growing flowers and herbs
that didn’t make it the first time, including marigolds, cosmos, lupins,
cornflowers, and coriander. I’m hoping to made lovely displays for the bees to
come and visit. Inside and outside the polytunnel the strawberries are still flowering away and have started to produce fruits. Just got to make sure I get to them before the slugs do!
On a final note: I’m not too good at
keeping up weeding, but because of that I think wildlife has thrived, including
slugs and snails unfortunately. Many bees, hoverflies, wasps, butterflies and
moths have been buzzing or fluttering around trying to pollinate everything. I
accidentally dug up an ant nest today which was very exciting and last week as I
was pulling up chickweed and a frog jumped out. He’s probably still in
there somewhere, hopefully eating a slug or two.
