How does your garden grow?

Let's be honest, it's been a crap year in the garden for growing vegtables. We've had some good flowers struggle through the variable conditions and a whole host of California poppies sewn in early July (from seeds 2 years old) put on a wonderful show during August and are still gamely producing blooms even though it's mid September. But it's the veggies that failed the most. The wet weather - let's be honest, the sun went on vacation in May and didn't show up again til August and even then was less than enthusiastic - conspired to kill alot of things even before they started and whole potential crops rotted in the ground. Then again, it could be the fact that I am not a dedicated green fingered must be out there every day or I get twitchy kind of gardener. I'm going to blame the weather :-)

It has been a good year for the fruit trees. The cherries were moist, succulent, very tasty and then eaten by birds (we did get a few), the apple and the pear tree were groaning and still are despite having several kilo's of fruit taken off already. The freezer will be groaning again with pies and crumbles before long.

The biggest and best news though is that I've now got a greenhouse! Yay!!! This was an early birthday present from Rolf and Steffi and it's wonderful. THANK YOU!!! We put it up a couple of weeks ago and moved all the plants in: tomatoes (that haven't yet fruited), salad (that's thinking about giving us another crop) and the late sewn veg (that slugs and bugs have reduced to 1 leek, 1 cabbage and 1 beetroot!). It looks lovely and the plants are really really grateful. Everything is now growing madly and even the tomatoes are starting to put out fruit (10 little green ones so far). It bodes well for next year as I'll be able to grow my seeds undercover before hardening them off in the cold frame (I haven't built this yet or told Inga I'm going to so let's keep it a secret between you and I, eh?) and then transplanting them to big tubs and pots. We've decided that the area set aside for veggies just isn't good enough to grow them properly so it's going to get manured over winter and made into a plant border next year.



So this year may still give us salad and tomatoes, maybe a couple of beetroot,a cabbage and about a dozen leeks. Pitiful if we were thinking of living off the sweat of my brow, but not bad for my first real attempt at growing things. Next year will be alot better. Promise.