The Veg Plot.

[garynortheast]

Been very busy with the garden over the last few weeks. The pond has settled remarkably well considering it's only been there three weeks. I'm also really pleased with the look of the maple and the corkscrew hazel in the wooden half barrels I bought last week.



I've already got pond skaters and great diving beetles in the pond and recently a few Large Red damselflies have appeared. The day before yesterday I had no fewer than five pairs of them all mating and laying eggs on the pond plants at the same time. You'll need to zoom in a bit to see them.



The structure of the front garden is almost finished now. Yesterday I completed these beds. They'll be for a mix of flowers and veg. I need to collect a trailer load of wood chip now to fill in the pathways.



Back veg garden is coming along. Pleased to say all the onions, garlic, and spuds are galloping away. Hopefully I should have a good crop of them all given the limited space.

[DarrenSV650S]

Really impressive Gary

[garynortheast]

Thanks Darren. I'm driven by the need to get plants in the ground for the veggie growing season. The pond was something I've long wanted to do, and having it there now and seeing the wildlife it's bringing in gives me so much pleasure.
It finally feels like I'm making headway with the garden - as long as I don't think too hard about what I still have to do!

[Sir Trev]

Great progress Gary. I'll be setting up the canes for the runner beans this weekend and hoping a couple more of the pumpkins germinate - just 2 of 8 so far. The tomatoes look happy, as do the onions and leeks, the spuds are well up now (maincrop) but it looks like a poor showing from the parsnips this year... Ah well, it helps keep me reasonably sane (ish) so all good.

[garynortheast]

Very special moments today. Firstly one of the large Red Damselflies landed on the back of my hand this afternoon, and stayed there for a full minute. Then this evening a large slow worm arrived in the grass surrounding the pond. I knew there were slow worms about as I found a small one in the covered passage way between my bungalow and next door. I moved it to one of my compost heaps. But the one by the pond looked like a pregnant female so there may soon be quite a few more here.

Originally Posted by Sir Trev

Great progress Gary. I'll be setting up the canes for the runner beans this weekend and hoping a couple more of the pumpkins germinate - just 2 of 8 so far. The tomatoes look happy, as do the onions and leeks, the spuds are well up now (maincrop) but it looks like a poor showing from the parsnips this year... Ah well, it helps keep me reasonably sane (ish) so all good.

I have my beanpoles up now and my runner and climbing beans are pretty much ready to go in. We look to be in pretty much the same place with onions and spuds though.

[garynortheast]

Lots of these critters around the pond, mating and laying eggs during the last week. Large Red Damselflies. This one, a male, was happy to sit on my arm long enough for a photo. In fact I've had several of them land on me over the last few days.





Busy day today. The front garden is pretty much done now. I put wood chips on the paths yesterday, and then mulched the beds and finished planting this morning. I have Red Russian Kale, Rainbow Chard, and lettuce seedlings planted along with a couple of rows each of radish and rocket. There are also marigolds and Cosmos planted. I've put up canes for tomatoes, a wigwam of poles for cucumbers, and another wigwam up which I'm going to try growing courgettes.



The back garden is coming along nicely. There are flower buds on the first bed of spuds. I mulched them with straw back when we were still getting the occasional frost. The straw has had the added benefit of helping to retain moisture in the soil and suppress weed growth.



The straw on the first spud bed was so successful that, after watering the beds, I mulched the second bed of spuds with straw.



Planted out all the runner and climbing French beans last night. Put seeds in where I had gaps due to insufficient numbers of seedlings.



Sat under the overhang of the bungalow for my lunch today, and this was the view. Once the hedge is taller and thickens up, I won't be able to see the road from here at all.

[DarrenSV650S]

Hope it all passed Mabel's inspection

[garynortheast]

Originally Posted by DarrenSV650S

Hope it all passed Mabel's inspection

Yup, she pawprinted the Quality Assurance slip to say it was up to scratch Darren.

[admin]

Looking very productive Gary

Sent from my moto g(50) using Tapatalk

[garynortheast]

Thanks John. I still have plenty more to do yet, particularly in the back garden.

Spent the best part of an hour and a half digging the remains of a large concrete post out of the ground yesterday evening. It was where I want to build the next raised bed. The hole in the ground was a yard deep before I managed to remove the post.