And the vegetable sowing obsession continues… I’ve now added mint, rosemary, cucumbers, chillis and dumpling squash to my ever growing experimentation. Most of these have been sown now, to plant out when other vegetables have been harvested, which I’ve hopefully timed right. The mint and rosemary should be perennial, so those will just be added to my overall garden collection, and the cucumbers I managed to squeeze some space in for, in my strawberry bed – I’ll then grow them upwards as climbers, to save on space and not overshadow anything around them. The strawberries also have more space than they did last year, so I’ve added a couple more bare roots to hopefully get a bigger harvest this year.
My tomato seedlings have now gone into their permanent pots, the sweetcorn are thriving, and the potatoes are, well, wild! I’m really excited to dig those up in a few weeks time, once they’ve flowered and the flowers have gone over. The broad beans and peas also seem to be really happy, and getting bigger by the day – I wish you could smell a picture, because the top of the garden where all the vegetables are growing, smell incredible. There’s just this wonderful, earthy, vine scent – which has actually made me order a vine tomato type perfume (influenced by myself, what an idiot!) because I just want to capture that magic permanently.
Garden hygiene is also something I’ve started practicing properly for the first time. By this, I mean keeping my tools clean. I’d usually just clean them at the end of summer and pack them all away, but a few weeks ago I gave my garden tool rug a proper clean out, as well as all the tools including my garden scissors and secateurs. Now I give each of them a proper clean every week, and make sure I keep everything in order – because I’m growing a lot more – I want to keep garden disease (such as powdery mildew) to a minimum, and I’ve noticed it’s already started making a huge difference. I also made a point of taking everything out of my cold frame / mini greenhouse, and giving it a proper clean out and hose down, before I put my second lot of vegetable sowings in there. It’s something I didn’t do last year, and I’m now embedding it as one of my garden habits, to hopefully keep everything thriving and happy.
