Blessed Rain!

After a couple of weeks of fabulous sunshine we have had a change in the weather and it started raining Friday night, rained on and off for most of the day, then on Saturday we had a downpour! It's Glastonbury's fault of course. The rain is welcome, as it means we don't have to go to the lotty and water, just let nature do her thing. We'll have to pop over and check for weeds, as the rain encourages them out of the ground of course! The rain has also refilled the water butts at home, as they had become rather depleted recently, I have been using this water for the garden, rather than tap water.

We've ordered some seeds from a new-to-us website, www.vegetableseeds.net, they have a sale on at the moment so ordered some seed varieties that we haven't had before, gotta be worth a try - a different broad bean to our usual Bunyards Exhibition (Aquadulce), some onion seeds (Ailsa Craig although the wrong onions were delivered, I got White Lisbon's instead - emailed the company and they are sending the correct ones immediately, which is great customer service I think), some more beetroot Chioggia (the pink and white stripey one) and a couple of climbing french bean varieties that we haven't tried before, Hunter and Cobra (sound like Gladiators to me!)

We also got some veg seeds free with a gardening magazine, so we'll give them a try too, spinach beet, and sorrel, and some more cauli and turnips and a few others. Got nowhere to put them at the moment of course, both the lotty and the garden are planted, or spaces spoken for. We'll have another look round the website to see if there is anything else we want, asparagus seeds perhaps, or other brassicas. We quite fancy having a go at kohl rabi, but to be honest what puts me off is not knowing how to cook it, I haven't a clue.

I did a bit of tidying in the garden at the weekend, and cropped as many of the ripe redcurrants as I could, they are all washed now and in the freezer, I managed to get almost 1.75 kilos.

 I also tidied up the strawb bed a bit, and discovered lots of rotten strawbs, so as we aren't eating them we think we will just scrap the whole lot of them and refresh the bed for something we will eat. I swapped some of the bed netting covers around, and thngs look a bit better now. I also sowed a load more petit pois in the pea bed, as not many of them had come through. And I potted on the courgette plants, hopefully they will be able to go in at the weekend.

I also filled several 2 litre size milk cartons with sharp sand, as we use these as weights to hold down the netting on the lotty - I suspect we will have to do something similar at home, its not an elegant solution but it works.

Hubby sprayed all the invasive and overgrown ivy in the back garden yesterday morning, with the Vitax's SBK Bushwood killer, it's not a quick solution but hopefully it will be effective.