Garden update

It's been a while since the last garden update. Some things turned out successes - courgettes, marrows and tomatoes have been prolific. Just wait until you see what the Culinary Consultant made using one of the gigantic marrows! Our freezer is bursting at it's seams with tomatoes in all different guises. 

There is also a load of plums waiting to become jam once we have finished the current batch. Our first plum jam turned out really good. We managed to get enough figs for a small batch of fig jam as well, which turned out fantastic. The cucumbers were good, and as you can see from the pictures, there will be loads of sweet peppers as well. 

But there were also things that didn't turn out quite as they should. My attempts at growing lettuce were soon devoured by slugs. The grapes all got some weird disease and got mouldy. Birds ate all the raspberries and cherries. There were a few apricots so we finally got to try them, and lots of pears are starting to ripen. 

We have learned a lot and I am already excited to plan ahead for next spring. By the way, all of the photos were taken two days ago, so the flowers are still beautiful, I love that there is still some summery colours in the garden. 

My own courgette (the only one I managed to keep alive
 from seed) is still producing and we have collected seeds
 for next year from this prolific individual hoping for similar
 yields next year.

We had a good yield of cucumbers
and a few more to harvest.

The cucumber still thinks there is time to make more fruit,
I hope it's right.

Finally some of the peppers are starting to get ripe, we
almost despaired that there will be no peppers at all.

Chillies

Most of the sweet peppers are small, but there is
one very impressive specimen.

The dahlias seem to thrive still, although most other
flowers seem to have given up for the season.

There is plenty of apples, unfortunately they are all
quite bad with spots and bruises. But they will do for
 stewed apple, just as they did last year.

Garden update

This time the garden update is a flower update. If you are following the blog on Facebook you know I bought "a few" flowers the other day as I got tired of the complete lack of flowers in our flower beds. I was going to leave all flower related garden issues to worry about next year, but I decided to just bite the bullet and get on top of it all now. The sooner it's done, the sooner there will be colourful flowers in the garden. I tried to buy flowers that wouldn't grow much higher than the little brick wall behind them, as behind the wall are just open fields and winds often get very strong and tend to blow over anything that is growing in the flower beds. I also tried to find anything that said "hardy" on the label as I got a bit of a reputation for not being very good at keeping plants alive.

The actual planting process was rather painful as whatever old flowers were left had clearly been in there for ages and developed roots that reached all the way to China. It would have been ok if I could just have dug everything up. But there are clusters of daffodil bulbs in there, so I didn't want to overhaul everything out of fear of damaging the bulbs. So clearing up the flower beds and making them ready for the new inhabitants took quite a while. It took three days from the time I got home from work to evening dusk to get it all in place, and now I'm hoping that I will be able to keep it all alive through the summer and hopefully next year the flowerbeds will require much less upkeep.

Before.

After.

Dahlias in bright colours

Fuchsia

I love the colour of both the flowers and foliage on this dragon flower.

Some lilies, both in pink and yellow. Sadly the beautiful flowers got smashed up in the rain storm.

I couldn't resist getting another hydrangea as the one we already have seems to like it here.

I bought a pink lavender to complement the blue one we already have.

Elsewhere in the garden there is also a bit of flowering going on:

The funny little succulent that grows under the pink hydrangea is producing these lovely pale pink flowers.

The honeysuckle is staring to get a bit old and woody and may need to be completely cut down but I will worry about that in the fall.

The oregano flowers are beautiful and there is plenty of them.

I don't know what this funny little thing is, but it's probably a weed as it's ubiquitous in the garden.

Although the damn birds have eaten most of our fruit off the trees there are still a few apricots in the tree and we hope we get to taste one this year as last year there were none left to taste.

The pears are coming along well, but there is still months to go...

Garden update

It's been a few weeks again since my last garden update. The sad news is that there will be no cherries at all this year, the birds have eaten them all. Also the raspberries disappeared while I was away on holiday, good thing I managed to pick my precious three small containers of them before they flew off the bush so to say. The courgettes are in high season and the first tomatoes are starting to turn red. The cucumber plant is also in full production. Outside, the onions are coming along, and the broccoli plants have been protected by netting. The herbs are already overgrown for the most part and would need some serious cutting down. The tarragon in particular is huge, and I don't quite know what to do with it. Planning to try some tarragon chicken but other than that I'm at a loss. 

The Culinary Consultant constructed netting to protect the broccoli from birds.

Lots of these!

And one of these (so far)

The tomatoes are trying to make their way to freedom.

Cucumbers are doing well. How they manage to support the cucumbers mid-air is a mystery for me.

Lettuce is finally big enough so that the slugs can't reach the top leaves.

The black currants are getting there. I can already see them in a jam jar.

And the current selection of flowers in the garden.

Garden update

It's been a while since the last garden update, so here are the most recent updates from the InvisiblePinkGarden. I can't believe strawberries and raspberries are starting to ripen, I have already managed a few sneak tasters and hoping soon the will be oodles to enjoy.

Raspberries!!! Could I be more excited???

My very own strawberries! They taste amazing.

Blackcurrants are starting to turn black.

We have already harvested a few courgettes, a there is more to come.

Cucumbers number two and three waiting for the picking.

So many tomatoes, now I'm just waiting from them to start turning red.

It seems like it will be a good grape year.

We have baby peppers!! I can't believe we are growing our own peppers.

The hydrangea is starting to bloom (hey, did you notice, I knew the
name of one of the flowers in our garden!!!)

Another poppy, this one was quite funny looking.

I had to finish off with another rose. I love love love my roses.