More rescuing...

Another bargain from the reduced rack - violas down from £6 to 50p!

They looked like they'd been allowed to dry out too much and were flagging but a good watering followed by being planted in the garden and now they're looking much better.

Picked this week 26th May 2013

 I'm managing at last to get a bit more variety in my salad leaves - 'proper' lettuce above

and chard below with hot white radishes.

...and a mix of just about everything

Hoping for home grown tomatoes and cucumbers soon though.

Mad May Weather

This Spring's crazy weather continues with blustery winds and hail - so much hail that it looked like snow had fallen.

Picked this week - 19th May 2013

 We've picked a mass of rhubarb this week - first these thin sticks from the allotment ...

..then some thicker ones from the garden - about 4 lbs in all.

And lots of salad leaves and radishes

and some more leaves..

 ...and more..

the thin white radish are from seed I collected from last year's 

surprise crop of white radishes and I'm very pleased to see them grow

a little variety among the failed running-to-seed brassicas this week -

some failed cauliflowers that are as big as a small head of broccoli

Just in case....

Double wrapped tomatoes

The calendar says it's May and we should be heading towards summer but in Yorkshire and Devon snow has been falling in the last 24 hours - and tonight's temperature here is set to drop to 3. That's not desperately cold ... but  .. I've got tomato plants and a cucumber planted out in the greenhouse and baby lettuce in the garden and blossom on the apple trees. There's nothing really I can do apart from cover everything in swathes of fleece and bubblewrap and keep my fingers crossed .....and wait till morning...

somewhere under there is the cucumber..

A visitor to the greenhouse.

I was moving pots around in the greenhouse when something unexpectedly jumped at me - a frog, barely visible against the soil. The neighbours have a pond and the frogs hop about between there and our greenhouse, hopefully eating slugs on the way.

Picked this week - 12th May 2013

Lots of lovely salad leaves again this week - lettuce, spinach and mustards - with more radish.

  And more of the bolting brassicas - we're still eating last week's so these have gone a bit limp in the fridge!

Gifts for the garden

I've been on the receiving end of people's generosity this week.
First a root of mint and a lot of tomatoes from my mum.





















 Then a huge amount of bluebells through Freecycle. I've planted these here and there round the garden, mainly under fruit bushes and I'm hoping to have my own mini bluebell wood.

Everything coming up rosy - well, pink and purple

It's a time of year when my garden overflows with pink and purple flowers - from borders full of honesty and tubs of pale pink angelique tulips

to the apple trees and ornamental cherry

and more waiting to flower soon - clematis and lilacs

Picked this week - 5th May 2013

Baby leaves of bordeaux spinach and little gem lettuce

 It's been a week of leaves. Salad sorts - lettuce, spinach, land cress, mustards -

mixed mustards, sioux and clarion lettuce, land cress

- and Brassica sorts -  spring cabbage and brussels starting to bolt so pulled and eaten as 'spring greens'

More radishes ready to pull - though I should have set a LOT more than I have.

And the first rhubarb!! 

May vegetables and fruit

Everything's coming along in leaps and bounds at the moment.

With warmer days - and nights - I decided to plan out the blue-podded peas












and some lettuce and spinach seedlings

 though I still ave lots of things growing on either in the greenhouse or out in the sun - brassicas, peas and beans mostly with some flowers thrown in.

the warm weather is causing the land cress to flower early though - soon this patch will be bright yellow

there's blossom everywhere - on currants, apple and I'm hoping there'll be some soon on the greenhouse vine









































and most importantly we're starting to harvest new spring crops - rhubarb from the allotment and radishes from the greenhouses

May flowers

May has started with the most glorious weather and a garden full of flowers. Lots of early ones - daffodils and forsythia - are still around but later ones  - tulips and honesty - are catching up.

tulips and forget-me-nots

dog violets under the peach tree

appeldoorn tulips

pretty and productive - daffodils and rhubarb

one of the recent 'rescue' polyanthus settling in