All Change

Lovely weather, which has meant that the resettled water butts have remained empty (boo) but we've been able to plant some new crops. We found the label for the spinach that I was going to allow to flower, and discovered that it was an F1 hybrid, which meant it probably wouldn't seed true to type, so I compost binned the remaining plant. This meant we had a nice empty container ready for new plants. Added some blood fish and bone to the old compost, and also added fresh new compost to the top and voila, container ready for planting.

Went to jolly old B&Q on Saturday, after my trip to the dentist to have a wisdom tooth removed, so needed something to take my mind off the stress and pain. We got some nice new plants, 2 veg, 2 herbs. We also got 2 wee planters to pop the new herbs into. We picked up another couple of growbags, one for our two forlorn courgette plants that were desperately in need of planting out, and another one for the pea plants we picked up. There were supposed to have been 12 pea plants in the tray... we counted 28 altogether! Most are in the growbag, but the extra ones have been potted into a large terracotta pot. I've wrapped both lots of peas with netting, as we have heard that birds really like young pea shoots...
Before....

After....

The two new herb plants are garlic chives, and coriander, looking happy and healthy in their pretty planters, alongside the basil and radishes outside the back door.


I rearranged the two runner bean and french bean pots to the side of the house where the courgettes are, and made a frame with bamboo and netting. No idea if it'll work, but if not then we'll do it differently next year. It is so good to be making use of what has previously been a dead area, a place used for dumping stuff we want to forget about... it's now all lovely and green and growing :-) The courgettes have started producing wee flower buds, not flowering yet but it's early days. It is just so encouraging to see the plants thriving.



The other veg plants we got from B&Q were Rainbow Chard, Now planted into the refreshed recycle container. I don't think we've ever eaten chard before, so if it thrives it'll be a new experience for us. We are keen on the idea of growing more unusual crops and varieties if we can, so that's the plan for the future if possible, to try out more unusual varieties, and heritage varieties.

Oh another thing we picked up from B&Q was a reduced planter set, containing tomato, pepper, chilli and aubergine seeds, plus compost and pots, all for a fiver. We'll keep these for next year. Bargain.

Look how well the little herb planter is doing! Everything is really thriving, especially the oregano, it's growing madly. Great!