Rain is good and bad.

We seem to have had incessant rain for nearly 2 weeks now..........which has good and bad points for the garden at this time of year. Rain gives plants a nitrogen boost so that when the sun does shine (it will....won't it?) the plants will race away and grow very lush, very quickly. The problem is it will be soft, sappy growth that slugs (apply pellets!) and aphids love. So you'll need to be armed with your spray guns ready to zap any clusters of green and blackfly before they can do too much damage.




In between showers yesterday I had to pull a leek that just hadn't grown anywhere as fast as all the others. On closer inspection it appeared to be rotting at the base. All the others seem to be growing strongly so I think it's just one of those things. The area it grew was sterilized with Jeyes fluid and I'll wait a few days and plant a cauliflower or something in it's place......I don't let any piece of spare land go to waste even if the ruins the aesthetics of the plot !




I'd worried that my onions weren't growing as I'd hoped but over the weekend my wife and a neighbour both commented how much they'd swelled since they'd last seen them a few days earlier which pleased me.....when you're seeing them every day you don't appreciate how much they've grown.



Everything is now planted apart from my runner beans and cucumbers. I'll construct the bean fence tomorrow evening.....taking great care to make it a lot more robust than last year's sorry effort when it kept blowing down or coming apart. The cucs will be planted into the border soil in one of my greenhouses at the weekend.



We're on holiday in 3 weeks time so I need to be really on top of everything and make sure everything is in place for my daughter's boyfriend to look after things while we're away. He's never done anything like this before so I'll leave him detailed but simple instructions with a list of jobs to do on a daily basis. All my spray bottles and homemade feeds will have to be clearly labelled so that no mistakes can be made!




I also have a vist from a horticultural society in the next week........I was asked if they could bring round some younger members and people who want to start showing. So I want to make sure the garden is as pristine as possible in order to make a good impression.