early june pictures

Picture time - the front garden is starting to look pretty again.
This is our stump, planted-up with succulents. Bit raw yet, should look great in a year or so.
The rose is Zepherine Drouhin over the shop door - flowering its heart out this year. The euphorbia (green plant below) doesn't look bad either!

A mans work is never done - had completely run out of pots again, so we had to take advantage of the good weather to wash pots, lots of pots.update on garden work
sown:
more peas in the serre, maize (again! - 3rd time this year) behind the greenhouse.
pricked out:
marigold lemon drops
potted-on:
crocosmia lucifer,
planted out:
lots of annual lavatera, all the ipomea, the rest of the sunflowers

New arbour for the garden

We have splashed-out on a new arbour for the garden, to replace the one we bought in 2004. That one needs some TLC - new velcro on the cover and rust removal/repainting.  It suffered quite badly in the last few terrible summers we have had, it was designed for hot dry weather! (weren't we all).

Here it is, with guy lines for the moment, until we can fix it down with pegs into the ground. As we are going to place it next to the dead-hedge, we need to cut off the tops of the reinforcing rod that we have used to support the dead-hedge.  The white stuff on the ground to the left is fleece covering an area that has been re-seeded with grass seed - we raised the level over the fosse. The wooden  furniture I bought second-hand last year ad have not had time up till now to get it out and give it a good coat of linseed oil. the table and four chaitrs done now, just two more chairs to go.

So we tested it out this evening, just as the sun was going down behind the workshop. Good dinner - sea bass baked over roast peppers, garlic and potatoes.  You can see the bits of metal that need trimming off MUCH more clearly in this picture!

Now you see them....

The first two strawberries of the year! And no slug holes, or bird beak holes - only lovely shiny strawberries, with loads more already ripening on the plants to come.

They tasted bloody good too!

update on garden work
sown:
Grass seed, over the fosse, having raised the levels again.
pricked out:
nothing recently
potted-on:
lots of cosmos - trying to get it a decent size before I put it out in the front garden. More annual lavatera
planted out:
- Some of the bigger cosmos plants & some of the lifted/divided gaura into the front garden. 
- Sweet peas, ipomea, marigolds & sunflowers into the containers by the BBQ.
- Chard (ordinary & rainbow) into the garden & the serre. Parsnips into the garden (had to lift some of the garlic a bit early to make room, but it tastes great!)
- Self-rooted Lonicera plantlets into the manger troughs alongside the old hangar. I have taken lonicera cuttings taken to fill these mangers.

towards the end of May - fruit will soon be ripe

The fruit bushes in the fruit cage are all either flowering or showing unripe fruit. The gooseberries, (which I rescued from a dull corner of the garden where they were plonked one year when we came over with a load of plants) have flowered and have some fruit on them. This is great, as I thought they were dead. I have inadvertently uprooted one of the  gooseberry cuttings I put in the potager over the winter and found it has already started to produce roots - so will have to enlarge the fruit cage next year!  There are also some red & white currants. Only the blackcurrants have not fruited this year, but I had to prune tham lots when I planted them in the winter.

  

The peas are flowering well now  and all the potatoes are well up. (pictures below)

I have put up strings for the tomatoes, melons & cucumber plants in the serre.

The strawberry plants I got from JS are showing green fruit now. The ones I bought are nowhere near as far ahead yet.

sown:
more peas, plus marigold 'lemon drop' in the serre
pricked out:
harts tongue fern (seedlings growing around the base of one I planted in the garden some years ago), perennial sweet peas,
potted-on:
annual lavatera, more rainbow chard,
planted out:
the cherry tomatoes, both red and orange into pots in the serre for now - will go outside the front door when the weather perks up, I hope.
Chard (rainbow & ordinary), plus Florence fennel and marigolds into the serre.
Sweet peas, some of the cosmos, some of the gaura and a few spare lavender plants into the front garden, haricots verts and parsnips into the potager
Ox-eye daisies into the beds in front of the willow fedge 

Today we have finished another part of the 'dead-hedge - between our back garden and the gîte garden. We had to level up the area (above) where the fosse was buried, which has settled rather a lot over the years. I think I will have to paint the concrete 'pennies' green. I have re-seeded this area, and will plant out climbers ipomea & sweet peas in the three containers shown, with room for more spring onions and some lettuce in front I think, plus some marigolds - very French!

Catch-up for May

There has been a 'ghost' in the front garden for the last week or so. We saw a wonderful miniature garden of succulents, grown in a lump of old tree trunk, at a garden fair recently. Having realised that we had a similar old stump and quite a few succulent-type plants we decided to give it a go, and put the result in the front garden. With the torrential rain of the last few weeks, it was necessary to cover it up with fleece to prevent the plants and soil from being completely washed away. Watch this space...

Having cleared the brambles, nettles, bindweed etc off of the bank by the confluence and pollarded the willows, there is quite a lot of lovely soil available. We think this area was used as a midden - lots of nutrients there then! I have planted rhubarb seedlings (which will take a year or two to become productive) and 6 courgettes, which should give us a surfeit of courgettes this year. To ensure that the chickens don't try to help us cultivate the area, I have had to erect a temporary fence round the plants until they get tobe bigger thanthe chickens. Then the chooks & ducks can go back in around them and eat up all the bugs & slugs.

Have had a similar problem in the crescent bed behind the hangar - I have planted dahlias, and the chooks were scratching up the new shoots as soon as they showed their heads above ground. Had to resort to the temporary fencing again. This orange mesh fencing looks awful, but it's light and easy to put up/take down, and once the dahlias are big enough, the birds can be let in again to eat all the slimy beasts.

well into May already

Spring has well and truly sprung, the apple trees are all in bloom - more blossom about this year than I can remember seeing here before. We also have May blossom - has been out since about the 4th May. The Rosa Banksia 'lutea' is also flowering its heart out.
Weather up to today has been very good, especially in the afternoons, which suits me fine. We have been pretty much non-stop gardening. We had to buy a new mower, as the old one finally gave up the struggle against rutted surfaces and grass clumps. Then the strimmer packed up (just when you need it), so it has been an expensive month already!The front garden is starting to look good this year, after all our toil - the aquilegias are flowering like mad. They are all seedlings from a couple of dark-purple flowered aquilegias that I dug up from my mother's garden before we sold the house - how many years ago now?? The colours range from the original dark purple, through lighter purples, blues to quite pale pinks. All the colours blend beautifully together - as all good relatives should! I have loads of seeds available is anyone wants some.
The serre is beginning to look well-filled now, and the plants in the ground are growing on beautifully. The tomatoes, melons, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers in the sere are in large bottomless pots to give them a bit more root room and depth of soil. It also makes targeted watering a bit easier. I have cleared out most of the flowering plants into the front garden or the small greenhouse to get room to sow more veggies in the soil.
sown:
second sowing of spring onions, mixed salad leaves, carrots & radishes in the serre
pricked out:
eccremocarpus scaber 'strawberries and cream' and other annual climbers to cover the dead-hedge
potted-on:
the cherry tomatoes, both red and orange
planted out
All the potatoes are planted now, though the later ones haven't come up yet.. plus I have planted out the cabbage plants next to the potatoes, along with the comfrey 'bocking 14' that Bron gave me last year (picture above). This stuff is almost too pretty to cut down regularly, which is what it is designed for - you lay the cut plants as a mulch over the potato beds.
The kale, the runner beans (8 plants, in the potager), rainbow chard (in the potager and around the garden)
geranium macrrohrizum, ox-eye daisies, sunflowers, alchemilla mollis (into the beds in front of the willow fedge) Nasturtiums into the beds in front of the serre.
bought in & planted:
There was a plant fair in Mael Carhaix today, so we had to buy SOME stuff, though all flowers, and not yet planted: A rosa rugosa 'rosarie de la haye' above, some more sempervivums, a violet with dark leaves and a 'creeping jenny' with bright green/yellow leaves