Another warm day. It's 6:10pm and 80°F - I reckon it'll be pretty difficult to sleep tonight....

Moved the Nasturtiums from the Leek bed. I must remember to leave more room between rows next year. I love the idea of companion planting, but when the companions are hiding your crop completely, there's no point them being there. I left the Nasturtiums that are between the rows of onions as there is more room. Funny thing is, those Nasturtiums are Dwarf Tom Thumb variety. I think the buzz word here is dwarf. Dwarf compared to what exactly? Those plants spread more than two feet across! God only know what the "giant" variety are going to be like which are in one of the borders......

Anyway the Leeks are a bit droopy now they've suddenly been exposed to full sun.

I fed the potatoes and runner beans some tomato feed this morning. The spuds have really perked up.

Elsewhere in the garden, the sunflowers are 4ft tall now, the Salvias have been throwing up some lovely spires of bright red flowers, and the Gazanias will be in flower any day now. The peppers are covered in dainty little flowers, and one of the plants have 3 tiny peppers beginning to grow. The tomatoes are really starting to go crazy now, but I think it will be another few months before they are at such a height that they will begin to produce trussers.

We have a cucumber (Telegraph variety) which we call Colin. Colin was outside in front of the parsnip bed, but he was looking a bit sorry for himself. Matty says he has a cucumber plant in his class room, and recommended Colin should live indoors. So we brought him in and he is now almsot 6" taller in a week!!!

All the radishes have been eaten now, I hope the seedlings hurry up lol

Highs of 81°F today - it was crazy hot on the bus home from work. Got home just after 3pm, and went straight out into the garden. Bit of weeding done, ate a few delicious radishes. It's great that all our hard work is beginning to pay off.

I can't believe how much the garden has sprung into life this month. It is so thrilling to see those tiny little seeds I sown just a few short months ago burst into life. They truly are full of promise. I am annoyed at myself for not doing this sooner. Sure, digging is a chore, and weeding is boring, but it is all worth it when you see those little seedlings poking their heads above the soil.

So I thought I would show you some pictures of the progress.

Firstly, the Maris Piper potatoes that we sown at the beginning of April are between two and three feet high. The flowers that they produce are so pretty. We had a bit of a scare a few weeks back when we thought that they may have the dreaded Blight. However, after some careful research, we discovered that a few of them had Magnesium deficiency. Weekly feeding with tomato feed seems to have cured them.


Infront of the potatoes, we have Ailsa Craig onions. They are about 8" tall at the moment. I think I over-did it with the Companion Planting lol


The leeks are surrounded by Nasturtiums, but seem to be growing well. The parsnips didn't germinate very well, and we only have around eight in that bed. They seem healthy enough, we hope they produce well.


The runner beans are very vigorous, and are going across the tops of the 6ft bamboo canes. We can't wait for them to start cropping!

The raised beds that Jason built are also full of life. In the small one are two varieties of carrot, some delicious French Breakfast radish, some lettuce which was attacked by birds so is now under netting, various herb seedlings, and peas (which are yet to come up). Lovingly defended by Wurzel.



The large raised bed is home to carrots, beetroot, spinach beet, Brussels Sprouts, a few onions, peas, and radishes under the netting structure. To the right of that is a whole bunch of seedlings which I thought were dead, but have all decided life is more fun lol I planted a few other plants on the wall of the raised bed: 3 different clematis, water melons, asparagus seedlings, and some netted lettuce. Sally looks after this bed.



In the large border, we have Brussels Sprouts, carrots, beetroot, sweetcorn, and a pumpkin. Oh, and after the poor germination of the other parsnips, we sown a different variety. They seem to have all germinated lol Even after the heavy rain we had recently almost drowned hem under 3" of water for a few days. Amazing! Here they are next to a pumpkin.


Here are the sweetcorn plants (9 of), plus a tomato plant.

The birds were eating the leaves of the beetroot, so we covered them, plus the carrots under this nettig structure.

In the other border, on the opposite side of the garden, we have Capsicums which have tiny little peppers on them. They are such small plants, maybe 12" tall.


We dug this little are yesterday. In it are 4 courgette plants, a water melon, lots of marigold and a sneaky pansy. The netting behind has some sweet peas I bought from Tesco growing up them, albeit slowly.

Below shows our sunflowers (Jason bet me 50p that there would be only 4 with flowers in the end, but look at those babies grow!), giant nasturtiums in front of them, strawberry plants that have just started to flower, and tomato plants. There are more marigolds too. I can't wait to see the amount of colour that (I'm hoping) this border will produce.

Bought a new hammy on Saturday, he's proper cute. Have named him Humphrey.


Dug over another border in the front garden today, and planted some lovely Summer plants.

Wow, the Courgettes only took six days to germinate!!! They started poking up yesterday. I may have done a little sex wee.....

I think I saw the first signs of life in the onion bed this morning, and, unbelievably, the runner beans are coming up. I really thought they would have been munched by slugs as I had planted them straight into the ground, but no, they are little fighters. The Sweet peas don't seem to have grown much, if at all since they were planted out. I think I should have maybe held off planting them outside without hardening them off first. Plus, it did say on the packet of seeds that they really shouldn't be planted outside until May. Same as the Runner Beans. Oooops!

A mixture of sunshine and showers today. Managed to mow the back lawn, and pulled up a load of weeds off the path.

There is a rogue element in the Potato bed. An imposter, which is not of Maris Piper origin. I noticed it this morning. It could well be the remnants of the huge 25kg sack of spuds we bought for a fiver off.... well, to be honest they probably fell off the back of a lorry in all honesty, but they were very tasty so Jas popped a few of the ones that had sprouted onto the window sill to chit next to the Maris Piper seed potatoes. I planted them in the corner of the bed on the same day as the Maris Pipers.

All this "you must earth-up spuds"lark is really confusing me. Do you cover the leaves? Hmmmm probably best I look it up me thinks.

The rain finally came yesterday. It's amazing how much it freshened up the atmosphere. The grass is beginning to look like grass again and not straw, the spuds are really starting to flourish, and the Sunflowers which only poked their little heads above the soil 4 short days ago, are between three and four inches high now, and taking over my living room window sill. The peppers are looking lovely; I'll re pot them into 12.5cm pots in the next few days. The tall Nasturtiums have germinated, as have the tomato plants.

The seeds from the BBC's Digin campaign arrived this morning, so I sowed the 5 Butternut Squash seeds (Hunter variety), some of the Tomato seeds (Gardener's Delight), a row of Bolthardy Beetroot. I sowed a pot of French Dwarf mix Marigolds outside.

I came to a bit of a scary revolation today - what the heck am I going to do with all the flowers I have sown from seed? It's my own fault; I should have read the back of the pack properly. I now realise that the original pack of Nasturtiums were of the tall, single mixed variety. How the feck did I think that a 1.8m plant would fit in between our onion and leek beds!??!!?!?!?!?

It has been a very warm month or two now, with temperatures in the 60's, although I'm pretty sure it has been warmer. We dug another border over yesterday. I had my heart set on a lovely border full of colour with annual flowers. Jason however, brought a load more seeds back, so it looks like my colourful dream border will have to wait. Still though, not bad for nine hours work eh! I'll finish it off tomorrow.



So, onto today. Well firstly, I went back to work after being ill for two months. Bought a mix of 6 peppers from Wilko. Red, green and yellow, about 3 inches high at the moment. Not bad for 3 quid. Wilko also had herbs on sale, 50% off, so I bought some and they are now all potted up on the kitchen window sill.

THE POTATOES ARE GROWING!!!!!!!!!!!!



We also have some growing action coming from the lettuce and sunflowers. Isn't it great when you hard labour starts to show signs of success :-)

Jason made another small raised bed. Just got to decide what should go in there!