updates

As requested a picture of our garden shed with tools and bits for the potager. Very neat at the moment, I even cleaned and oiled all the tools so was feeling very smug!

The completed potato bed – seven kilos in all. I did a little to help but Colin did most of the work, so it’s his turn to be  smug!

The new strawberry bed is also looking good. Some plants are a bit small but most are going great guns and have plenty of flowers. They are all mara des bois this year as they’re so full of flavour. In previous years we grew two other varieties in addition to the mara des bois to extend the growing season, as many books etc. advise, but in fact this didn’t seem to make much difference as all the strawberries just kept producing for the same amount of time.

The blackberry massacre is still ongoing but we’ve reached the fence and can now actually see the boundry and beyond! I overheard my neighbour who uses the house behind as a hunting lodge so isn’t there very often, questioning what I was doing. (ie. why hadn’t I just whacked a load of chemicals on it). His younger companion, who I didn’t know, was explaining that it was perhaps because of concern for the birds; though I also had more selfish motives – blackberry and apple pie, and blackberry liqueur being two of them!