Rich plants a sprout plant

It’s been a long time coming, but we finally planted out the vegetable patch today. Now that the railway sleepers are in place it’s a proper raised bed, with plenty of room for root growth and space for branches and leaves to spread out.

So we started digging at the back wall and worked our way forwards, opening up little holes with our trowels and dropping in the sprouts, broccoli, beetroot and pepper plants that have been quickly getting more and more waterlogged on the patio.

It took us about three hours all told, by which time we’d not only transplanted the most vulnerable plants, but also seeded the carrots and leeks that will one day - hopefully - become soup, and the lettuces that will join the rapidly advancing tomatoes in a salad.

Stepping back to admire our handiwork was very satisfying. Now we just need to fight off the slugs, and await the fruits of our labours. Quite literally.

The patch, fully planted

With vegetables you get the best of both worlds. Something to eat at the end of the season and, before that, blooms as good as anything you might find in a cultivated garden.

The beans are now brightening up the patio with red flowers on the runners, and a delicate pinky purple on the French. The tomatoes are already starting to open tiny yellow blooms, the bramble is a riot of white petals (and already some green fruit) and the potatoes are budding well, so it won’t be long before they, too, are flowering outside the patio doors.

My favourites, though, remain the beans, which I have found the most interesting and curious veg of all those I am growing, right from the day I looked in the greenhouse one morning to discover that they had gone from nothing to 10cm tall overnight. They have continued their extraordinary rate of growth ever since.

French bean flowers

Runner bean flowers

Very exciting. We haven’t had any new home-grown arrivals in the greenhouse since the beans poked through the tops of their pots (and they’re going on for seven feet tall now and showing no signs of slowing down).

So it was good to see that the two strawberry runners I’d poked into some pots of compost in the slim hope they might do something special have rooted and become plants in their own right. They’re already larger than the seedlings I’d bought to start the crop, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they started producing fruit in their own right in another month and a half.

Spurred on by two small successes, I’ve poked another five into compost in the hope they’ll do the same. If they do, I’ll already have doubled my initial investment.

Two new strawberry plants

Mixed news from the plot today. We harvested and ate the first tiny crop of strawberries on Saturday; they were juicy and so full of flavour that they made the shop-bought ones we had yesterday taste watery by comparison.

And good news on the patio this morning, as the first dozen of so flowers have started to bud on the runner beans. Bright orange and clearly ready to blossom, they take us one step closer to harvest time, trimming time, slicing time and freezing time, as by all accounts they will produce more veg than I could ever hope to eat.

But it’s bad news for the broccoli. It’s still sitting in pots in the greenhouse, waiting for the vegetable plot to be boxed in, which is happening today. That means they need a lot more care and attention than they would if they were outside, and although they were watered on Saturday lunchtime they missed out on a drink yesterday, as I was away from home.

I visited them again this morning, and they were limp and badly drooping. They had sucked their little pots dry and all the soil had pulled away from the sides.

I gave them a good drink, of course, but I think the next couple of days could be a little bit touch and go for my brassicas. I’ll be keeping my green fingers crossed.

Not enough for jam yet. Or even a yoghurt, but my first crop of strawberries is ripening up at quite a rate.

Apart from decorating the dining room (and the less said about that, the better), Sunday was a day of garden maintenance. The vegetables had reached the point where they needed some serious attention, which was duly given.

For starters, the first two potato crops were in grave danger of turned into a swampy mulch by a weekend of almost unbroken rain. They are growing in a dustbin and a trug, neither of which has good drainage, and so had to be moved under the garden table to get them out of the downpour. It would be a shame to lose them now, as the tallest are now approaching four feet (most of it under ground after two months of earthing up) and are on the cusp of flowering.

The remaining four potato crops are growing in dedicated potato bags, specifically designed for the task in hand and sporting good drainage, so they were moved out of the greenhouse to stop them from shooting up too far before they’d had a chance to produce any veg.

They have now been sat down beside the runner beans, which in turn have been joined by five French bean plants. They were planted at the same time as the runners but are only half as high as their non-continental companions. Still, I’ve given them their own climbing frame, and am hoping they’ll thrive in the slightly cooler air, as the runners have really taken to being outside. They’re shooting along the bamboo cross-bar I’ve tied across the top of their wigwam canes and are starting to show signs of early flowers.

That all made room for the tomatoes to be transplanted into decent sized pots and set down where the potatoes and beans once lived. The tallest are about a foot tall now, and they’re going to need some stakes for support.

Everything else was just a matter of making sure it was happily watered and rotated for even growth, although I did put straw under the strawberries, as they’re now fruiting quite well (three of the berries are fat and red, the rest green) and they’d rot if they lay on the soil too long.

Assuming I can keep the slugs and snails at bay after all this rain, things are looking fairly good right now. I’m happy to write off the disastrous adventures with mushrooms and mint (perhaps it’s an ‘m’ thing) if the rest of my crops continue so well.

The garden is really getting carried away with itself now. For the first few weeks it all seemed to be nice and controlled and refined, with little bits of growth here and there. Shoots, hints of green, few enough leaves for each new one to still be an excitement. Now it’s a race between me and the plants and, I have to admit, they’re winning.

The potatoes can’t be earthed over any more (they’re already under a mound of compost and manure three feet deep, and still growing), the tomato plants are about six inches high, and the strawberries are still green, but multiplying by the day.

So it was that I went to work two days ago when the beans were a good six inches shorter than the roof of the greenhouse, and yet when I come home that night… zip… they’ve shot right up and are touching the uppermost panes of glass.

That meant, of course, that they’ve had to be moved outside, where I’ve built them a bamboo climbing frame to play on. They’re my first proper outdoor crops, apart from the mushrooms which are being distinctly quiet and boring, so I’m a little worried about how they might accommodate such an abrupt change.

So, I’ve topped them up with some more compost, heaped on the manure and given them a good drink in the hope they’ll survive. Really, though, they should think themselves lucky. The vegetable plot proper is still not ready, and so they’ll be staying in their pots until the end of the season. Taking your home into the outside world with you like that is kind of the plant equivalent of camping. So, that should make them happy. And happy beans means many beans. I feel some bagging and freezing coming on.

Rich trims the leaf salad

The potatoes are out of control. The leaves are already well over the top of the trug in which I’m growing them, and I’m not going to be able to keep earthing them up much longer. The beans, too, are putting on about an inch or two a day at the moment, with the tallest ones almost at the top of their supporting canes. And the strawberry plants already have green strawberries on them, too. It’s still only May.

The leaf salad has been ready to harvest for a few weeks now, so after a trip to the shops as we sheltered from the rain (new bed, mattress, settee, armchair), we set about harvesting the leaves, and ate them for dinner.

We mixed them with some shop-bought salad, so I’m not sure which bits were home grown and which were commercial, but it was all very pleasant so there’s obviously nothing wrong with the crop. The cut ends should sprout new leaves and replenish the supply, so there’s more of this to come, but I’m really most keen on seeing the beans on the table. At the rate they’re growing, I’m guessing they could be sprouting pods in a month or so.

You go away for three days, and come back to find a jungle in your greenhouse. I can’t believe how much things changed over the bank holiday weekend.

The potatoes have gone mad; foliage and stalks all over the place. The leaves on the beans are turning into great parasols. The strawberries are getting taller and are still in full bloom, and the sunflowers are growing at a steady pace, if a little slower than I might have imagined.

The peppers and tomatoes, though, aren’t making so much progress as I’d hoped. I thought they might have been my main crop, but now I’m starting to wonder.

Big bean leaves

Potato plants

Mice like peanut butter.

I know because yesterday I picked one up. By accident. I was in the greenhouse re-potting my peppers, tomatoes and beans when I lifted the bag of seed potatoes from under the bench. They’re small and round and have long red roots coming out of them. Kind of like a mouse and its tail. So I didn’t spot it until it was in my hand.

It jumped. I jumped higher. It scampered off in terrified silence. I dropped the potatoes and made a far less dignified noise than the little rodent, although I think I gained some credibility later on, for while he cowered under the compost bag I stayed put and did another hour of planting and re-potting with my jeans tucked into my socks.

So today I went to Homebase and bought a humane trap to catch and release him down by the river. It’s very simple. You put some peanut butter on the cap, snap it onto one end, and then balance it so that the crook of the boomerang-shaped device is on the floor, the buttery end is pointing up and the open end runs flat along the floor. Sniffing the butter, the mouse wanders in for a quick lick or two, overbalances the whole unsturdy contraption and and finds himself trapped as the door slams shut behind him.

Well, that’s the theory anyway, but it was so difficult to balance that I have my doubts. I actually had to scoop out some of the peanut butter before it would sit properly. But we’ll see. By tomorrow morning I might have a new pet, who can hopefully be liberated far enough away from my strawberries to give me some fruit this summer.

Fruit means jam, and jam and mice don’t mix.