It's been a while since I planted my veggies and it's going well-ish! I'll start with the bad news. The courgette plants. I had three, I now have one. Having just watched River Cottage and listened to Hugh saying you mustn't water the leaves because they'll get burnt, I think I may have found my problem. I try to aim at the base, but sometimes there's a bit of splashing, you know how it is. I'll be more careful with my remaining plant. My onions have also been a bit odd, some are flourishing, others just popped out of the soil looking mouldy! Not sure what went on there.
Potatoes in their tyres are doing well and are of huge interest to my neighbour's young son. The earlies have been in for more than 12 weeks now so is it not time to harvest them yet? My allotment-holding brother and Carol Klein's ace book Grow Your Own Veg say I have to wait for them to flower or turn yellow and fall over. No sign of either happening yet. I might strike out on my own and have a dig around in a week's time, just for the hell of it.
My purple-sprouting broccoli plants are getting v bushy (no sign of the actual broccoli yet), the pepper plants are growing v slowly but there are teeny little pepper buds which excites me enormously.
But the prize for growing most impressively, and usefully, goes to my salad leaves. I had my second salad this week made entirely of my homegrown leaves, so satisfying! The tomato plants are about two feet tall now and have recently sprouted flowers so hopefully I'll have my own little tomatoes to go in the salad too soon.
On a fruity note, I ate my first strawberry from my hanging basket today – it was so tasty and smelt incredible, definitely not like shop bought.
More are turning pink so I might average a strawberry every couple of days!
Having worried about how my little veggies were going to grow, I feel a smidgen more relaxed. My sole attempt at companion planting was marigolds and on the whole they seem to be doing the job. I think keeping the strawberries up high in a basket has helped keep some of the nasties away from them. However, the hosta is being eaten alive and my attempt to surround the base in pine cones was thwarted by my puppy, who thinks they're her chew toys.
So far so good, we'll see what happens in the next thrilling installment of my veg patch...
