June Adjustments

No garden ever behaves the way you want it to.  It's you that has to make the accommodation.  And my garden is no different.

My potato grow bag experiment was flagging badly.  The spot I'd chosen for them didn't get enough sunshine and the potatoes growth was spindly and very much smaller than potatoes planted in the full sun at the same time.  My husband and I carefully moved the bags to a much sunnier spot in front of the bed that has roses and rhubarb in it.  After only 3 days, I can already see a difference.

No matter how much room I think I have, there's never enough.  I therefore now have a collection of 6 large pots, each of which is home to a pepper plant.  A friend and I exchange plants every year.  I give her tomatoes and she gives me peppers (and this year a Japanese cucumber!)  In addition, I purchased 2 sweet pepper plants.  Unfortunately, I think I've mixed her labels up.  Once they've started bearing, however, there won't be any mystery.  Two are cayenne peppers and 2 are jalapeños.  The Japanese cucumber has been placed beside the pole that holds up our satellite dish and I'll wrap the post with fencing wire so the cucumber can grow vertically instead of horizontally.

Speaking of things containered, the Sweet Million tomato is living up to its name.  Each flower cluster is populated with an enormous number of buds.  I foresee lots of cherry tomatoes for salads!  This plant is in a half-barrel - and very happy, too!

I'm impressed with the rest of the tomatoes as well.  One Health Kick tomato is nicely forming fruit in the classic plum shape.  The plants are very sturdy - in fact all of the tomatoes in that bed are looking very happy.

I've already had a little foray into the Pacific Russet potato bed.  These plants have no flowers on them at all.  I understand that when the flowers start to fall, you have baby potatoes you can rob, but seeing no flowers here I decided to root in the soil and turned up a lovely little potato.  I've decided, however, to leave these spuds alone.  I'll let the tops die down and we'll keep these ones for the winter.

The Sieglinde potatoes, however, have got flowers well formed.  These ones will likely have the honour of gracing our table first.  Potato salads!  Yum!

Yesterday I put plastic netting over the strawberries.  Lovely big fat berries are starting to ripen and with one already falling prey to the birds, I decided I wasn't willing to share!