Garden Update

Since my last post, I really haven’t spent much time in the garden – between an injured leg (now recovered), a vacation, and – most recently – a bad cold, I have really been neglecting the poor thing. Taking a walk around today, I feel shamed.

Trough 1 contains brassicas of various kinds. The cabbages seem to be developing ok, but the brocolli seems very straggly, and not particularly healthy. The bed is in dire need of weeding – as are all the others, in fact.

Trough 2 contains squashes, courgettes and cucumbers. After 2 weeks away, I was expecting to see a mess of overgrown courgettes. There is just one, and it looks pitiful. Not sure why nothing seems to be growing, despite plenty of flowering. The cucumber plant has several cucumbers, though – they are a spiky spherical variety with a slight lemon tang, so it’s not all bad.

Trough 3 was supposed to be a mixture of salad leaves and carrots. However, it is so full of weeds, I might just dig all the leaves out – it is so difficult to determine what is salad and what is chickweed and baby thistles.

Trough 4 was already weedbound – I was in the middle of clearing it by hand when I hurt my leg, and it is over-run again. I think I am going to consider this “lost” for 2014, and treat it to some heavy-duty treatment with a view to getting it into condition for 2015.

But there is a brighter side. Having decided to give Blackberry ‘Reuben’ a try – a variety that fruits on new growth as well as old – I was too busy dealing with an attention-demanding foster dog to get around to planting it; and it got left and then forgotten for a few days in my conservatory. When I next looked, the leaves were all frazzled to a crisp. After trying to recover it, I cut it right back to the earth, to kill or cure. There is now a very healthy plant growing up again – in fact, thicker growth and more shoots than there were originally.

Also, the pear tree is burdened with fruit. Once again, I am faced with the issue of when to harvest (September, I believe), and how to ensure the fruit ripens but doesn’t rot.

1 Comment

  1. http://www.reubenblackberry.com/

    “Unlike floricane types, primocanes fruit on the first year wood, and can be cut to the ground after winter-induced dormancy. If preferred, two smaller crops can be obtained from the same plant-one early in the season, (referred to as a floricane crop, produced on the previous years’ wood), and the other crop later in the season on the current years’ wood, which will be produced after the plants have been cut to the ground.”

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