As I haven't blogged for a little while, this will be quite a long post!
Firstly my slug rings arrived last Saturday and are now all out except 1, protecting what is left of the courgette plants, the spinach plants and some of the carrot and spring onion seedlings from the greenhouse. I have also put more courgette seeds into the ground, next to the devoured stalks of their brothers in the hope that something will grow!


On Wednesday disaster struck! Due to all this non-summer weather we've been having, gale force winds managed to blow my greenhouse to the ground, knocking all the plants flying! There was soil and seedlings everywhere! The spring onions suffered the most, tipping from their tray completely! The radishes also tumbled from the safety of their pots, but luckily they were easily salvaged. By a stroke of luck the lavender, carrot seedlings and strawberry plant hardly suffered any damage at all and remained in their respective containers. I then braved howling winds and horizontal rain to restore the greenhouse and plants to their former glory. The greenhouse is now weighted down with a concrete slab, so hopefully it will stay put now. All but the spring onions have been put right. These are now in the process of been potted on into yogurt pots as I don't have the space at the moment to put them in the ground.


Finally I have just acquired some pea seeds that I won in a seed giveaway from The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast. They are the Lucky 13 oriental mix, which includes "A special blend of 13 all different very nutritious and interesting oriental vegetables." I also got Douce Provence Pea, which "Grows only 21⁄2ft tall and loaded with sweet delicious peas." They are from a company called Victoriana Nursery.

Another off topic post

But here is a photo of my 2 year old son sporting the scarf I've just finished knitting for him today!

TWAG - The War Against Gastropods

The courgette plants are looking quite a sorry state at the moment as, despite my best efforts, have been all but devoured by slugs. I am hoping that they will recover, although this has put their growth back by quite a bit there is still *some* green above ground.

I have a plan however! Currently the plants are being protected by rings of coins or eggshells. The coins are proving to be a far superior deterrent. Thus I have taken the decision to purchase something a little more permanent in the form of slug rings. These are basically rings of copper that will repel even the most persistant of slug or snail without harming them or poisoning the soil, or any other wildlife, which also means it's child friendly too! Hopefully they will arrive tomorrow so I can reduce my nightly partrols and slug flinging activities!



In other good news everything in the greenhouse is still alive and growing, although I need to plant things on very soon, unless I want the smallest carrots and spring onions in the world!

Slightly off-topic but thought I would share

Here is a photo of my daughter Elin, just after she got her fringe cut!

Blooming Heck!

Ok so we've had many days of rain, some thunder, some more rain and even a bit of sunshine! As you can see this has had the wonderous effect of making all the flowers that were very small to suddenly erupt and reach for the sky! I have netted and eggshelled my courgette plants as something keeps eating their leaves but I'm not sure what. The little pot full of water was supposed to contain beer to drown any rouge slugs, but the heavens opened before I had a chance to fill it.

My little tomato plant is still alive and the fruit fly invasion appears to have subsided on it's own. However the tomatoes don't appear to be ripening and are staying green. I'm hoping all it needs is more sunlight and some food, which I can do tonight or tomorrow.

Also the seeds in my greenhouse have started to come up, I now have little spinach, spring onion and carrot seedlings to go with my radishes, lavender seedlings and strawberry plant!

Damn more flipping rain. Good for plants, bad for me. Guess I must be a fair weather gardener!

To Do:

Feed plants in garden and greenhouse
Spray tomato plant
Repot mint plants

Quick update before I head off to bed. Well it's good and bad news in my little garden today. Good news is it's been raining all day, which can only be a good thing! Also most of my courgette plants are still going strong. I say most, as a few have been succumbed to some beastie or other (I suspect slug) taking one or five bites out of a few of the seedlings. I've put a net over the plants and plan to put pots of beer out tomorrow if I get the time.

Also my little tomato plant has become infested with fruit flies that have migrated over from the compost bin. I am loathed to do it, but they will need a spray tomorrow and probably later in the week too to try to keep the numbers down. I just hope it doesn't affect the tomatoes too much. I have yet to dig another plot for the lettuce, partly due to lack of time and also I didn't fancy trying to shift clay in the rain! Project for a drier/sunny day I think.