Bees

Our neighbours have a problem with bees - there's a nest in their shed, bees buzzing in and out.

Luckily I know a man who keeps bees at work, so I mention it to him - suspected honey bees and he has a nice empty hive ready to fill!

So he calls round with all his gear - only it turns out they're not honey bees after all - they're bumble bees.

And here they are:



Shortly before....



Being relocated to their new home in the field at the back.

July's Photo

Slugs!

The first harvests are coming in. I've been eating new potatoes and broad beans, and the youngest daughter has almost finished munching her way through the first row of peas.

I hurry home from work and dig up another one of my potato plants. These are quite large and look really yummy. Just enough time to put them on to boil before I settle down with a beer to watch the footy.

One of them has a bit of a hole in it which seems to be full of earth. No problem. I take it over to the chopping board and slice off the end with the hole in it.

Something twitches.

It's an enormous slug - one of those horrible brown ones with the orange round the edges.

And I've just sliced it in half.

Suddenly my potatoes don't seem quite so yummy.


BTW, I never knew slugs ate potatoes. Is this usual? And anyone know how I can stop any more of my spuds from being slug chomped?

Blackfly!

My first infestation – and I’d been doing so well!

They’re attacking my broadbeans – all the tender young shoots covered in a mass of black aphids, and they’re starting to creep over onto the runner beans too.

They’re being farmed by ants and I have to admit it’s rather fascinating watching them running up the stems of the plants tending to their herd, while a couple of large ladybird lavae lurk on a leaf nearby, waiting their chance to move in on unattended stragglers – it’s all drama in my patch of dirt.

But, interesting though it is, it’s not doing my plants a lot of good.

I attacked them last night with a spray of water and liquid detergent but it doesn’t seem to have done much good. Perhaps it’s too dilute. I’ll give them another dose this evening with a stronger mix – maybe that’ll be more effective.

Anyone got any good tips for getting rid of blackfly?

Weeds!

I arrive home from a weeks holiday and the first thing I do is run down the garden to check on my patch of dirt.

Wow – hasn’t everything grown!!

The runner beans are halfway up the poles – the broad beans pods are a good six inches long (so hubby tells me) and the peas and potatoes are flourishing.

The nettles are doing really well too. Dandelions and hogweed have sprouted from nowhere – How on earth does hogweed get to be so big in only a week? It certainly wasn’t there when I went on holiday! And there’s loads of it!

And that looks suspiciously like bindweed chasing the runner beans up their poles.

Not good!

I like the poppies though so they can stay.

Winners and Losers

Some things are doing really well in my patch of dirt - as you can see from these pictures - I've even added one from a different angle this month for you to see my main successes so far - my legumes and potatoes coming on a treat! With a bit of luck I'll be eating peas and broadbeans and maybe some new potatoes in only a matter of weeks!



My parsnips and sweet corn are also doing allright, even though they are still quite small.

But I have also had a couple of resounding failures. My carrots are a disaster! They germinated but now I only have a couple of plants! I've no idea why. Did something eat them? And I have only one cauliflower plant. I put them outside the greenhouse to harden off and the slugs munched them!!! Death to slugs!!! And as for my courgettes and squash - it was really sunny here on Monday and they were sat in the greenhouse while I was at work and when I got home they were all scorched and brown. Anyway, I've planted them out so we'll see what happens.

So to try to fill the gaps I've popped in a row of beetroot and some onions. I'll let you know what happens to them :-)

What are Wheelbarrows For?

I need some more potting compost - and some growbags - everything is going wild in the greenhouse and starting to look a bit root bound.

So off I head to the garden centre.

Boy these bags are heavy! I buy one of compost and then one growbag because that's all I can lift. Mind you a rather fit bloke helps me to get them into my car.

Sadly he's not there when I get home so I'm going to have to do this on my own. Somehow I've got to get them down to the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden.

Easy solution - I'll use the wheelbarrow....

... or not :-(

The wheelbarrow is full of broken panes of greenhouse glass. I know a couple got broken when we assembled the greenhouse and hubby had to nip out to the glazier to pick up some more - but I thought he'd got rid of them ages ago.

There are also some bits of rusty metal, some decomposing weeds, and the whole thing is half full of stagnant water.

There's nothing else for it - and I'm certainly not waiting for hubby to get home and help - so I half carry, half drag the bags down the garden.

Excellent - done it.

Except now I'm too knackered to do any gardening - I need a cup of tea!