Sorry It's been so long

What with one thing and another, keeping my blog up to date seems to have fallen by the way, and yet I have been as busy as ever in the garden. Today I picked my first broad beans from and autumn sowing of aquadulce claudia in the greenhouse and planted out in Feb I believe. The pods are long, containing up to six beans each or so, and tasting delicious. I also cut my globe artichoke, determined not to leave it too long this time. Takae wasn't certain, despite me telling her it was a delicacy, but it means I get the next one to myself!
Having spent 3 days in Portsmouth courtesy of Daniel, it was surprising what a little bit of rain will achieve. The Romaine lettuce are hearting up, so I picked one to see how it was. The outer leaves were enormous, and still edible. Slugs had managed to broach the copper defences, through bridges made by other leaves, but generally well grown. The water cress is trying desperately to flower, but I just keep cutting it, and the rate the church salad boxes are growing, we might need to eat them before 20th!
With a bit of help, I've cleared enough of our allotmet to plant tomatoes, celeriac, cabbages and cauli. I have pumpkins, squash, courgettes, peas and beans waiting the wings, so tomorow Vicky, Takae and I will try to get most of the stuff in. It's odd we've not even had it a month yet, and there have been a few surprises,.

New Garden

I am totally amazed. A while ago I registered on the Channel 4 landshare scheme, and last weekend I had a contact passed to me. To cut a long story short, I now have a new garden to plant more fruit and veg in.

As you can see, there are a far few weeds, dandelions, thistles, bindweed and cleavers are the main ones. We got a whole bucket of bindweed roots out of a very small space. Although I will be putting in a compost bin, the present weeds will need to got to the tip, as I do not want the the seeds and perenial roots.

The trees need to stay, otherwise I have a free hand. At the bottom the owner is putting in a new shed for himself, and once that is donw he is going to let me have space in the old one.