However, the joy of exploring the garden soon gave way to the realisation that we had to work hard to catch up with nature. We did not expect to see quite so much growth - very hot weather tends to slow the garden down - but it seems to have done the opposite. The Green Fingers Award of Garden Merit definitely goes to our lovely neighbour who was stoic with the watering cans. Emily is a novice gardener but managed everything wonderfully well. We cannot say thank you enough.
Emily helped herself to produce but there were still masses of fruit and veg to harvest. The lettuces went berserk (anyone fancy a sack load of salad?) and there were tomatoes, spring onions, courgettes, peas, strawberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, parsley, potatoes, onions and beetroot. And of course, as the trugs were filled we have had to either cook and eat the bounty, or freeze it - or as I was doing late last night, making beetroot chutney. (There is only a certain amount of goats’ cheese and beetroot salad that 2 people can eat. There is a vegetable rack full of courgettes too.
The cucumber plants are noticeably less productive this summer as they do prefer cooler conditions but there are enough fruits for our needs. They keep much better if you store them in a cool larder rather than the fridge. The summer cabbages have not hearted but the red cabbages though are growing okay. The pumpkins are swelling nicely but the butternut squash are mostly foliage with just a few flowers and fruit. The late raspberries are just starting to fruit and today we had 4 each on our muesli, topped off with what felt like the equivalent of a whole punnet of strawberries – each!
The stars of the show were the luscious cherries. There were not many but they are highly prized as they are so expensive to buy in the shops. A couple of years ago, we bought a Stella cherry tree to train into a fan up a south facing trellis. This variety has an RHS Award of Garden Merit and is grafted onto dwarf rootstock to keep it under control – cherry trees can otherwise grow to an enormous size. The tree is renowned for producing lots of sweet black/purple cherries. However, as you can see from the photo ours is not a Stella tree. It has large, RED fruits with a delicious sweet-sharpness. It tree must have been labelled incorrectly and we are hoping that it is not a too vigorous variety. It is very healthy apart from some ants and aphid attack but I put a sticky collar to discourage the ants and had a good session squishing aphids. I am thinking of naming our tree: Serendipity.
Summer is simply not summer without the gorgeous scent of sweet peas drifting around the house and garden and my free packet of mixed seeds has done really well. (Thank you Gardeners World Magazine) We picked so many of the flowers before we went away that the smell in the kitchen gave us a headache! Sadly, those plants which were setting seed got missed and this reduces flower production. However, there is still a presentable show and my favourite colour this year is the stripy pink one.
I am sorry I can’t linger here longer (I would like to improve my blog and find out why my followers have disappeared from view.....) but there is still work to do in the garden. But it is joyous, simply joyous to bring in the harvest. I must remember to dead head all the roses and cut back the hardy geraniums so that (hopefully) there will be another flush of blooms later in the season.
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