End of month view: June

It's been a month of making progress, if slow: the mad rush of spring has calmed and I'm just planting out the last of my young plants (looking a bit the worse for wear, I have to say: this drought-ridden spring hasn't been kind to plants in pots).

But for now I can enjoy the garden burgeoning into colour, everything growing at the rate of knots, and my earlier work coming - sometimes - good.

It won't surprise anyone who knows me that the veg garden is seeing most of the action: so that's where I'm concentrating for my end-of-month stocktake this time.

There have been a few surprises as I'm trialling one or two veg varieties this year: first up is an amazing pea, due to make its debut in the Thompson & Morgan catalogue next year I believe. If you're not yet convinced that veg can be as beautiful as ornamentals, take a look at this:

The all-important taste test, of course, has yet to come: at the moment the pods are rather a muddy purple tinged green, not unattractive but not exactly wow-value either. We'll see: just love those flowers though.

Another splash of colour is the double row of marigolds I sowed on both sides of my onion bed:

I'm so doing this again: it makes me smile every time I see it. It's supposed to deter onion fly too: they get confused by the strong scent of the calendula. Well - there aren't any onion flies as far as I can see: so it seems to be working so far.

The spuds haven't been so lucky.

I've never had early blight on the new potatoes before. It's making my heart sink for my so-far hale and hearty maincrops. I should know, of course, that in damp and rainy Somerset the chances of escaping fungal disease of any kind are pretty close to zero: but such an early arrival has come as something of a surprise. The spuds themselves don't seem affected: these are 'Foremost', nice enough, but rather bland for my taste.

And finally: a visit to the engine room.

Packed with growbags this year: there are over 20 in there, at last count. It's not how I usually do it - I'm a big fan of growing in soil in the greenhouse borders as a rule, as plants look after themselves so much better. But this is the greenhouse I inherited (rather than the one I brought back from the allotment: that's still being planted up with cucumbers, melons and sweet peppers). So it's on a hard standing, and I didn't have much choice.

Fortunately I was after some experiments to do for t'other blog, so I've got all sorts of things going on in here: product reviews, trying out different supports, you name it. Oh, and those baskets in the back are my sweet potatoes: all of them T65 this year after they won my undying support by producing my best crop last season.

Elsewhere, the whole garden is getting decidedly woolly around the edges, and I am, frankly, dreading July: it's hedge-cutting month, and strim-the-undergrowth month, so I'm looking down the wrong end of a lot of hours strapped to either strimmer or hedge-trimmer. I have half a mile of hedge here: this is no small undertaking. Here's what we're looking at: the back slope gives some idea of the jungle-like undergrowth:


...and here's a typical hedge.

Luckily they're not all quite that tall, but since they're all hazel-dominated mixed hedges they're pretty much this overgrown. Wish me luck.

Thanks as always to Helen at The Patient Gardener for hosting the EOMV!

End of month view: March

What a difference a couple of months makes.

Last time I did the rounds with the camera was the end of January: barely a leaf had burst its bud at that time, I hadn't even started the post-winter clearup, and everything was looking decidedly bleak and not a little scruffy around the edges.

I woke up, along with the garden, some time in mid-February. And in the six weeks or so since then, everything has changed.

First up (of course) is the veg garden: always my first priority at seed-sowing time. I've been ferrying eyewatering quantities of scaffold boards back on the roof of my poor groaning family estate to divide up the long, thin space into 4ft x 10ft beds. At first they were all re-covered with the black plastic which has been keeping my soil protected over winter: but now, gradually, it's all coming off.

January:

...and now:

The far end is well up and away: with the addition of a bit of bought-in soil improver (not yet quite confident about how good my soil might be), new potatoes, onions and shallots have joined the overwintering broad beans and autumn-sown onions.

Under those cloches are two varieties of pea; Feltham First (early and robust) and heritage variety Telephone, which reaches up to 5ft tall, so I'm told. Further down there are rows of leeks and carrots under fleece for protection against carrot fly.

Greenhouse no. 1 - unheated - is filling up: the other day I had to rig up the coldframe (in bits since the post-move chaos) in a hurry to get the first of the sweetpeas, chard and overwintered marigolds ready to go out.

But just look at Greenhouse no. 2 - the one that's frost-free. I have run out of room. There is no other way to put it. The windowsills in the house are groaning with seedlings too. What am I going to do!

Right, never mind the veg: what about the rest of it?

Here's the rock garden, or rather the herb garden to be. Nicely trimmed these days: and I've started placing a few pots of bits and bobs around the place ready to be planted.

January:

...and now:

In the blue pot is an olive tree, about six inches tall when I got it (it was a freebie which looked a lot better in the magazine than what actually arrived on my doorstep).

I nurtured it and nursed it, and now it's about 5ft high and a lovely healthy young tree. Then it got left outside in the snow and ice, and I resigned myself to losing it: but no. It didn't even lose its leaves.

So since it's survived that, I figure it'll breeze being planted outside. It's moved around this patch a few times now, trying to find the right spot for what I hope will one day be a fetchingly gnarled evocation of Italy on my doorstep, and a rather fine backdrop to all my Mediterranean herbs.

There's also plenty going on here quite independently of my own feeble efforts to spruce things up. Little pretties keep popping up all over the place. I keep stopping in my tracks on the way out of the house: the other day it was because I spotted a clump of pulsatilla. Pulsatilla! In my garden!

Aren't they lovely? Those palest grey fluffy feathers set off the dusty mauve of the flowers so perfectly.

And look at this: in the hollow between two sides of the old stone wall, partially collapsed, a little colony of windflowers has sprung up.

I've spent many thorny hours clearing the bank above where my tropical edibles patch will eventually be. It's not only painful, but also slightly unnerving as this bank is about 12ft high and much of my bramble removal was done while hanging precariously off a handy branch. Must invest in a ladder.

January:

...and now:

It's all looking a lot better now, so I guess the splinter-pocked fingers were worth it.

There's more pot placement here: you can make out the fig in the far corner, and just out of sight there's a Pawlonia tomentosa I was given - half-dead on arrival but now, rather excitingly, reviving.

And other things are popping up here, too: lupins and a carpet of some kind of small white comfrey. It's beautiful, the bees love it, but it is obviously a little invasive: I shall have to think carefully about where I move it to.

So on to the only other bit I've done anything to; the circular bed around our shady seating area.

January:

...and now:

I've recently been told by someone who's lived in the village a lot longer than me that this was once a pond. This is answering a lot of questions: why, for example, a hefty Rodgersia (usually a bog plant) can survive so well in a free-draining, chalky soil.

I have an uncomfortable feeling this circular bed may be hiding a pond liner of epic proportions. We're talking probably concrete; maybe not even split. We are talking bog garden.

This may rather alter my plans to turn this area into a scented garden full of daphnes and Christmas box and wintersweet.

For now however I have just cleared the winter debris and I'm about to launch into a huge weed-through, followed by my standard fall-back in situations where I have little time and large areas to fill: I'm planning to sow this lot with seed from Pictorial Meadows, already sitting in an inviting little packet on my desk as I type.

It isn't all weeds and bog plants though: tucked up on the bank, a little higher than the rest, there is a paeony already swelling into bud.

A paeony! In my garden! (another chalk-loving plant I have never been able to grow before. My cup brimmeth over: snowdrops, primroses, pulsatillas and now peonies. Can it get any better than this?)

And last but absolutely not least: I haven't touched this bit but I have been in love with it for a whole month now. I have, on the hill that rises at the back of my garden, a host of golden daffodils.

There are hundreds of them, across the width of the garden, and we have been giving them away to friends in big fat bunches as well as stuffing every vase in the house. Whoever planted them, many decades ago: I hope you are somewhere just as beautiful right now.

Thank you to Helen, aka Patient Gardener, for hosting the End of Month View: the perfect opportunity to take a step back and take the big view for a change.

Back indoors again

Arrrrrrrgggghggeeeeeuuuuuucchchhhhhhhgggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmfffffff

I HATE February!

Especially THIS February! ¹

The gods of weather up there are looking down at me and laughing themselves sick. Right, they say. We've given her ice, snow, hail, sleet and torrential rain on a Biblical scale for the last three weeks: now let's give her a nice sunny Saturday. Look! Lovely! Warm temperatures, and no rain at all! We won't even make it windy! Let's make it that exact Saturday she's got to stay indoors because it's her little girl's birthday party and not even she can come up with an excuse that can get her out of that so she can go gardening.

Then on Sunday, when there's nothing much going on and gardening to do, let's unleash the forces of hell on her! Yay! Lashing rain - tick! Howling gales - tick! The kind of temperatures that freeze your nose off as soon as you look outdoors - tick! Oh, what fun we had!

Harrumph. I've had to retreat back into the greenhouse again, as you may have guessed. I do actually like my greenhouse, but it is so frustrating not to be able to get outside.

Anyway: enough moaning. There's been a lot going on in both greenhouses just lately (wonder why that could be?). The one in my garden is chocablock with seedlings after I (again) started sowing a little earlier than I should. And up at the allotment there are changes afoot.

For the last six years since I put the greenhouse up there has been a fine crop of dandelions pushing their way up through what passes for a path (trodden earth, doncha know... that's code in gardening books for gardeners who couldn't be bothered to lay a proper path, and is almost always a very unsatisfactory option to choose). It's extremely irritating, especially as they seed themselves into the border, occasionally grow big enough to trip you over and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

So I've been spending the last few sessions up there fixing the problem. And here's what I did.


Before I started: see what I mean about that path? Not really up to scratch, and certainly not model-allotment stuff. You can even see the failed previous attempt at path-making there. Let nobody ever accuse me of seeing a job through from start to finish.

Anyway: the dandelions were history after a bit of brisk hoeing, and I was ready to go.



First job was to hold the borders back with a smart edging of gravel boards. Actually they're the gravel boards you can (just about) see in the above picture after cleaning up. Recycling and allotmenteering were made for each other.

The weed-suppressing membrane is recycled too: a gardening job I did where I had to rip up a membrane someone put down over a potato bed after planting (don't ask...) I've stapled it on as insurance against pesky weeds pushing through the gap - a lesson hard-learned from previous experience.

Sand was next: this evened out the bumpy bits nicely. I used a load of sand I had left over from doing the path in the garden (see? Nothing goes to waste around here!) and trod it down with the gardeners' soft-shoe shuffle (you'll see the same dance wherever lawns are to be laid: pretend you're an Egyptian mummy swaddled from head to foot in bandages and then try to move your feet up and down and you'll have it). Once raked and levelled with another board dragged over the surface it was ready to go.



Ta-daaaah! Almost the finished article: my camera ran out of batteries before I got the sand brushed into the cracks to finish it off. I would have mixed cement with the sand had I been really serious as the weeds will still grow through the cracks using plain sand - but at least I'll be able to pull them out easily.

By the way the concrete slabs are recycled too: I picked them up from our local primary school after they had a patio lifted.

So all this cost me... well.... nothing. Apart from about three or four half-hour sessions down the lottie. Not bad, eh? Wish I'd done it years ago now...


1: except the crocuses, I like those. And all those buds and shoots I was wittering on about the other day.

Oy! Gerroff me geraniums!

Would you just look at this?


This has been going on for a month now, and at first I put it down to a bit of frost damage - this is Geranium maderense, after all, I'm trying to coax it through the worst winter since I were a nipper, and despite the best efforts of my little fan heater it's still a bit parky in the greenhouse.

But then I arrive for a quick check round this morning and....


Now, I think to myself, if it weren't January and a foot deep in snow outside and minus 7 at night and generally BLOODY COLD I'd think that was caterpillar damage.

Nah.....

Oh yes it is. A closer inspection revealed a small but nonetheless inescapably green caterpillar munching away at my geraniums. Not just this one but also the overwintering pelargoniums which are losing their leaves not through the usual culprits of downy mildew plus a touch of the chills, but blimmin' cabbage white caterpillars. In winter! In a seriously cold, frosty winter!

With a yelp of horror and outrage I'm afraid I chucked the culprit out of the door into the snow in a fit of vindictiveness and it was pounced upon by the chicken so I don't have photographic proof, and you'll just have to take my word for it. A good hunt through has not revealed another one.... yet. But my dander is now up (whatever is a dander, do you think?) and I shall be inspecting with an eagle eye every morning from now on. I also crushed a couple of sleepy aphids and a blackfly while on patrol, so clearly letting your guard down on pest control isn't on the cards even in this weather. Is there no rest, I ask you?

Incidentally in case you're wondering what cabbage whites are doing eating geraniums: if they can't find cabbages then pelargoniums and geraniums are fair game for all the brassica caterpillars as I discovered a couple of years ago when a big brown caterpillar eating a client's pelargoniums was a cabbage moth caterpillar. So pelargoniums taste like cabbages. Apparently.

And here's a bit of advice: don't grow calabrese in your greenhouse. Even if you've grown too many seedlings, can't bear to throw them away and it's the only place you've got left. Especially in a record-breaking caterpillar year.

Harrumph.

Rays of sunshine

Feast your eyes on these. Don't they just make you feel warm to the tips of your toes?

They're the marigolds left over from a summer of tomato-growing in my greenhouse. I confess, contrary to anything they tell you to do in the textbooks, I didn't bother pulling up my tomatoes at the end of the season and just left them in the greenhouse to wait until I got around to clearing them up. In the meantime, the marigolds have taken over, growing tall and lusty and generally flourishing until they're filling the whole space with glowing, warm orange and amber.

The funny thing is, I haven't done a thing to help them out. I haven't watered them, fed them, dead-headed them or in any way paid them any attention since about August. And they love it: they're flowering their little hearts out. What's more, they're ridiculously healthy - not a hint of mildew, just big, hefty, happy plants.

Next year I shall try to remember just how drought-tolerant marigolds are. And that sometimes, leaving things well alone is much the best way to garden.

I've got three triffids

I took a rip saw to my new triffid the other day. I couldn't quite take the JAS option and sharpen my axe (apart from anything else everyone kept running away when I asked them to help). So, a breadknife being laughably small, I raided my husband's carpentry workshop (don't worry, dear, I chose the rusty one).

My heart was in my mouth, I could barely look.... but actually, it was remarkably easy, and now my one monster triffid is three baby triffids.

I've hedged my bets with three possible overwintering options:

At DEFCON 1 is Triffid 1:

Most at risk of being lost to frost damage, especially if we have another winter like the last one, Triffid 1 is outside, in the border, and will stay outside all winter. I'll be giving it a thick mulch of autumn leaves, topped off with a pinned-down plastic bag (to keep the water off the crown as much as possible) covered in compost for extra insulation.

At DEFCON 2 is Triffid 2:

(can you tell this is the knobbly bit that was trying to get out of the original pot?)

Potted up into a nice 50:50 mix of John Innes and multi-purpose, plus a handful of sand thrown in for drainage, this chap is going into the frost-free greenhouse to see out the winter. I'm not too confident, to be honest, as I did this to my majestically lush Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii' last year, and that's supposed to put up with roughly the same conditions as a Hedychium - but it turned to mush pretty quickly.

And at DEFCON 5 is my fall-back position, the one I really ought to be able to get to survive, the one I'm risking domestic peace and tranquillity to preserve by putting it in the dining room for the winter:

Actually there's a sting in the tail, as this was the only chunk which came away without a big hunk of root on it. It had some very sturdy-looking side roots which I hope are even as I write developing into the large rope-like snakes of its larger brothers. But in the meantime I've had to support it with a network of canes to keep it upright and the roots, such as they are, as stable as possible.

I chopped them all back by about two-thirds so the root systems wouldn't have the bother of supporting nine-foot greenery as well as finding their way around their containers (or my other plants, in the case of Triffid 1). Now I just have to watch every single weather forecast for that crucial first frost: in fact I think even if one hasn't arrived by next week or so I'm bringing them in anyway. Wish me luck.

A lovely pair of melons!

Now boys, that's enough sniggering. I mean the horticultural kind, of course :D

I'm a melon virgin (oh stop it) - so I didn't really expect any results at all. So I was skipping all the way home when I found these in my allotment greenhouse:





One's a lot bigger than the other, and they're both on the small side at the moment, but hopefully they'll both reach a good enough size eventually (oh dear... what is it with double entendre and veg growing?). In the meantime, I've given them a bit of extra support (oh pleeeeease...) with a pair of old tights:



Being a bit of a babe, I only had black tights in the drawer so now I'm worrying they won't allow enough sunlight to get through for ripening. But we'll see.

Now, that's quite enough of that - I'm off to find something more sensible to talk about.

Gorgeous greenhouses

I'm a bit of a sucker for garden visiting - you know, when you get the chance to nose around someone else's garden under the guise of Supporting the National Gardens Scheme. Some are real gems - others less so, but there's usually something you can find to get enthusiastic about.

So while I was on holiday recently in the Isle of Wight I dragged my poor family off again to see someone's back garden (they've even stopped protesting now, having opted for resigned tolerance instead). The one that was open while we were there was Pitt House, near Bembridge, promisingly advertised as being four acres with statues, ponds and a waterfall, plus sea views.

Well - it was nice enough, and the waterfall was lovely as were the sea views, but I couldn't help thinking they could have achieved a bit more with all that space (four acres - and they have two gardeners, too, so no excuses). There was, however, one true gem in amongst the ordinariness: a Victorian greenhouse, entirely original (even had those cast-iron bracket thingies to raise the vents) and utterly gorgeous.

Oooh I want one...

...and look at these grapes. They were cutting bunches for people to taste - absolutely yum.

Best not to eat this one - poisonous. But enormous.

I thought this was a natty idea - invented by the Victorians, of course. It was just a shallow pool of water sunk into the floor of the greenhouse, under a bench. It evaporates over a hot day, keeping humidity levels high without any need for spraying floors or doing anything, really, except topping it up from time to time. It was a bit green and scummy - but you could probably improve things by... oh... planting a tropical waterlily in there or something...

Isn't this sweet? I discovered it tucked away in a corner under the benches. No idea what it was doing there.

And this was the pièce de resistance: backed on to that sumptuous main greenhouse was a sunken one. Just look at those tiles. It was entirely wasted on a load of ropey old fuchsias, but it got my imagination firing on all cylinders. Melons... pineapples... mmm......

How to make a coldframe #4

Time to get back to my coldframe construction - it's been put on the back burner a little since all the blessed weeds started growing in about April. I'm currently juggling with a Heath Robinson construction of planks and old greenhouse glass next to my greenhouse as the home for my long-suffering seedlings (late-sown summer annuals, mostly) - I do wish I could get on and finish the deluxe model. At this rate it'll be just about ready for the first frosts...

Anyway, I think I left this just as the uprights were nicely battened and ready to clad. You start by doing the end uprights, the ones you put battens around the inside edges as well as at top, back, front and base. The reason for these inside battens will now become obvious: these are what you fix the cladding to.

This is a pretty easy process: you can either use thin planks, like I have, or following the Terence Conran design more closely, you can use overlapping cladding, which is kind of wedge shaped and widely available from DIY stores. I originally thought this would look a bit clunky (actually I still think that) but now I think it might be the better option - the above looks smart, but it does inevitably mean tiny gaps between the planks, as wood rather inconveniently tends to move as it gets soaked or dries out. Cladding, on the other hand, can move all it likes but it's still overlapping, so no draughts.

The only slightly tricky bit is cutting the top triangular wedges to size: the best way is to draw the shape of the upright onto the planks as a cutting guide before you actually nail them on to the battens. Or you can do it like me, and fiddle about cutting extra bits off here and there as you go along, thus doubling the time it takes you and making you swear in frustration.

No prizes for guessing that we'll be cladding the rest of it next time.

Previous bits of the series:

How to make a coldframe #1

How to make a coldframe #2

How to make a coldframe #3

How to make a coldframe #3

Right, now having blown your brain cutting impossibly shallow angles for the upright dividers (I hope it wasn't that bad - I "borrowed" my husband's professional shed-making machinery so I cheated)... now here's an easier bit of woodwork for you.

The battens you attach to the uprights are to hold the cladding in place, and should measure 25mm x 25mm, though I couldn't find that at my local branch of Wickes so settled for 25mm x 38mm. As you can see from the pic you only need them along the top edge and down the two vertical sides of the dividers - not along the bottom. You'll obviously need the battens on both sides of the two central dividers.

You do need to cut the top batten to shape at an angle, but it's a lot easier this time. Use the edge of a bit of cut-off batten wood as a spacer to work out how far down you need to attach the batten itself (if you're using 25x38mm wood, use the 25mm edge). Just line the spacer up with the top edge of the divider and draw a line underneath. This marks where the top edge of the batten will go.

Then cut the batten to about 10cm (4") too long at each end and nail it on so that it lines up with the mark. After that, it's just a matter of cutting the ends off flush with the divider.

The upright battens are far easier - unless you're a real perfectionist (or are borrowing your husband's shed-building machinery) you don't need to cut the ends at an angle as they go in pretty close anyway, certainly close enough to fix the cladding to. You do still need to do the thing with the spacer, though, or the cladding won't lie flush with the uprights.

After you've done all that, you'll also need to put in an extra bit of battening all around the inside edge of the two end dividers - the divider in the picture is an end divider, so you can see how I've done this if you look closely. This is so that you can attach the cladding across them to form the ends of the coldframe. Again, you don't need to be too exact - just cut the battens off straight and fit them in as snugly as you can.

I'll get on to cladding the ends next time, and all this will hopefully start to make a bit more sense.

In case you missed the previous bits of this inordinately long series, here they are:

How to make a coldframe #1

How to make a coldframe #2

How to make a cold frame #2

Hmm... photography never was my strong point, but bear with me here.

For my mega-coldframe I've adapted the design from Terence Conran's Garden DIY, a very handy little book which has lots of useful projects and explains things simply enough even for novices like me. I've made both my compost bins from a design in this book, and very successful they've been too (when I make the third, I'll put that on here too). So if anything in my description of how to make these doesn't make sense - get the book.

After getting the base right, it's time for some woodwork. This design centres around dividing frames, which are then held together using the cladding. I suspect it will have little structural strength in the long run - i.e. I won't be able to move it much - but that doesn't bother me: if it bothers you, you'll need to work in some stronger connecting pieces to hold the dividers together.

The dividers are made from 2x2 (5cmx5cm for the metrically-minded) treated timber. Measure the depth (front to back) and width (side to side) of the space you have available - the good thing about this particular design is that you can have as many or as few dividers as you like, so the coldframe can be whatever size you wish. Mine is made up of three sections, so I've made four dividers (two at each end, two in the middle), which will eventually be spaced a little over 2ft apart.

For each divider, cut a length to fit the depth, then two more for the uprights: one at 1ft (30cm) and one at 18" (45cm). Finally, cut the length that will slope across the top: it'll need to be the same length as the base, plus about 4" (10cm).

Nail the two uprights on to the base at each end, using 2 3" nails at each joint, driven in at an angle - this will mean the joint is much firmer and won't pull apart.

To set the top rail, lay it across the two uprights so that it rests lining up with their top surfaces, and mark off the angle it lies at. It'll only be a very slight slope. Saw this off so that the top surfaces of the two uprights are now at an angle (hopefully the same).

Nail the top rail across them, using the same angled-nail technique as before, and leaving a length of rail sticking out from each end. Finally, saw off the ends of the top rail so that they lie flush with the uprights.

Next: putting on support battens (you can see a couple in the picture above - sneak preview!)

How to make a cold frame #1

Just occasionally I'm not so much a gardener as a builder. When you're developing a garden, the first several stages involve an awful lot of digging, lugging stone around and construction - it all seems to take ages and hasn't got a great deal to do with plants. But if you have the patience to do it, it's worth it.

I've been struggling to manage in recent years without a decent coldframe, so this spring I've decided to bite the bullet and make myself a super-deluxe model, the entire length of my 8' greenhouse and about 3'6" from front to back. This is not small for a coldframe - but then my greenhouse is already groaning with seedlings and I've only just started early sowings, so I do need the extra space!

As you'll see in the picture, the first step, before I so much as banged in a nail, was to sort out the area where the coldframe was to go. There were two blackcurrant bushes here, which were always a bit close to the greenhouse for comfort, so I moved them to the allotment this winter. I had to hoick out a spare gooseberry bush, too - not such a well-thought-out manoevre as I hadn't anywhere to put it. Luckily I've got two more to the right of this area, so I'm not exactly going to go short.

Then I marked out the area and dug it down to half-a-spade's depth. This is a really useful depth for hard landscaping - it does for paths, patios... pretty much anything, really.

Next I edged the area with boards - I used 4" boards, but you can use standard gravel boards which are 6". These were attached to short stakes at the corners and checked for straightness with a spirit level.

I roughly levelled out the earth inside the boards, and then put down some weed-suppressing membrane, stapled to the boards on the inside to about 1/2" from the top (you can just about see the edges in the picture). And, finishing touch, about 9 bags of gravel from the local DIY store. This means you can level it easily, and the coldframe isn't resting on bare earth - which means it won't rot so quickly, either.

Next instalment... the start of the woodwork!

Sun today, rain tomorrow

The weather really can't make up its mind. We've just had the driest spring on record: six weeks without a single drop of rain. And that's in 20-degree temperatures - by English standards, that's summer. My poor garden was getting more dessicated than a Dr Who victim (sorry, my 7-year-old is obsessed and I therefore have an hour's Dr Who indoctrination every Saturday evening. It has a way of seeping into everything else, too.)

Now, we've had nothing but rain for more than a week. Admittedly, that's far more typical of your average English spring, but we do usually have the odd dry-but-cloudy spell to ring the changes. Now the path down the garden is once again under three inches of water and I can't get out there as it's a quagmire and there's no point planting anything until it dries out a bit.

My greenhouse is very well-tended, anyway - the only dry spot in the place. I put my cucumbers into the earth border today (this post should probably go in my allotment blog but what the hell). They're "Cum Laude F1" - the seed cost a bomb but lovely little plants. The rest of the greenhouse is bursting at the seams - I'm sowing seed every two weeks all this year to keep allotment, cutting garden and Christopher Lloyd summer bedding scheme in full production, and my humble little 6ft by 8ft can hardly stand the pace.