the rest of the garden

The vegetable plot is coming into production with all available space now taken up with growing plants so I can turn my attention to the rest of the garden. I must admit that I tend to neglect everything that doesn’t produce food so I’ve had a spell today trying to remove a heavy growth of couch grass from around some buddleia and azalea shrubs in a far corner. It was also starting to encroach on the soft fruit beds but that wasn’t my motivation. I'm going to have a go at reproducing some of the azalias and rhodies by layering them so I've been clearing round them and will peg down suitable branches later this month.

Then there’s the back and front lawns to cut. An onerous task but it does provide compost and mulch material. Trouble is the lawns produce far too much cut grass so half of it goes into the green recycling bin.


I bought some native wild flower seeds a few weeks ago and have been sprinkling them around in small patches I've cleared around the edges of the garden. They won't get any special treatment, just like in nature. If they survive and bloom it will add a splash of colour and hopefully attract beneficial insects. With a bit of luck they'll self-seed and just get on with what they do best, leaving me to concentrate on food production.

Dodging the showers I managed to get some potting done in the greenhouse and all the tomatoes are now in their final positions. After doing a few swaps with a friend I now have five varieties: Alicante, Black Cherry, Costoluto Fiorentino, Roma and Shirley. Two cucumbers and a courgette are also storming away which only leaves the peppers and aubergines to be potted on when they get a bit bigger.

We had more new potatoes for tea today: Pentland Javelin which gave a better yield than the Lady Christl but the flavour was nowhere near as good.

I had two plants growing in a 15 inch pot and they gave me over 1 kilo when I tipped them out. Probably with more space they’d have given more but a lot of my container poato growing is still a bit experimental. I’m recording a lot of details to find the best combination of potato variety and container size.

Away from gardening for a minute I saw a guillemot down on the estuary today. We get the odd solitary cormorant but this was the first time I've seen a guillemot. They breed in colonies on cliffs but the nearest cliffs are on the other side of the Solway in Scotland so it must have been having a day out.