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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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 6:18 am and is filed under Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.