Where did May go?!

May has been and gone and fingers crossed the same can be said of the frost (RIP sweetcorn seedlings). I think we may have all been fooled by the warmer weather at the beginning of the month and a bit over zealous with early planting. By mid-May we had lost our first batch of sweetcorn seedlings (planted out just a week before) and many people lost their beans and potatoes. Thankfully we had another batch growing in the greenhouse so we will replace them with these. As luck would have it, our beans have since come up and we decided to plant our potatoes through the black weed-stop material, mainly to control the weeds on the new plot and it would appear that this may have saved our potatoes from the frost. They did look rather limp and black in places but have since rejuvenated and would appear to be none the worse for it.

In an effort to get things growing on the new plot we decided that for this year the best plan of action would be to cover the whole plot in black weed-stop material else by the time we had rigorously weeded and removed all the stones, glass and other debris it would most likely be Christmas! So, at the bottom end of the plot we planted our potatoes which should clean the earth whilst merrily producing some spuds; moving up the plot towards the shed, we have now planted out our courgettes, spaghetti squash and butternut squash and behind those we have 50 or so tomato plants. That leaves us with the 2 tunnels which will house broccoli, cabbages, cauliflowers and cavalo nero.



The very back of the plot, against the fence needs some serious tidying so we can move the compost heap over from the original plot. The raised area where the shed sits is unsuitable for growing so we will probably have some pots there this year and think about making some raised beds for next year (perhaps a project for the winter months?).

Meanwhile.... back on the 'original' plot.... the beetroot are almost ready for picking as baby beets and the parsnips, onions and garlic continue to do very well. We have already had a few salads from the beetroot leaves and stalks that we pulled out whilst thinning out the seedlings. There was just enough room between the ill-fated sweetcorn and the beetroot to squeeze in another row of parsnips so we sowed the remaining seeds (31 May). Apparently parsnip seeds do not keep so we had nothing to loose by sowing a few more. The borlotti beans we planted around the wig wams must have succumbed to the frost so we planted some more this weekend (30 May) and a salad mix in 2 rows between the wig wams. Some of the dwarf beans in front of the broad beans seemed to have lost their way a little so these were transplanted into the gaps of the existing 2 rows and we planted another row of dwarf yellow beans (30 May).



Weeds had rather taken over the area to the left of the fruit cage so this took some clearing but once this had been done, we made a start on planting/sowing this area.



We have sown 3 rows of Kelvedon Wonder peas (31 May), some more stripey beetroot, a couple of rows of Florence red onions, some little gem lettuces, mixed salad leaves and Romaine salad leaves that were so successful last year (all sown 23 May). Once our sweetcorn seedlings from the greenhouse are ready we will sow another batch of these besides the peas so we will have 2 sweetcorn beds. After a severe weeding we discovered we have plenty of coriander and parsley and the horseradish is coming up too although we will need to keep an eye on this as apparently it can take over.



The shed has also had a makeover...we have painted it a beautiful lavender colour which also provided us with the idea to paint lavender bushes onto the side panel. Very impressionist lavender bushes, I might add.. best viewed from afar! We also planted a row of sunflowers against the same side of the shed so if the slugs don't snaffle them these should add to the whole provençal effect!





We had our very first strawberries on the second Bank Holiday of May and jolly tasty they were too!