Well, I was wrong about the blueberries. The things that withered and died were the flowers. They've left hundreds of little green berries in their wake. Blueberry muffins are on the horizon after all! Hooray.

Our first strawberries are beginning to ripe, but typically something is eating them. Birds, I think. It's so frustrating. I always forget just how frustrating growing our own can be over the Winter, and each Spring I sow seeds and plant seedlings with 'oh it will be fine this year' thoughts and it never is! It is still fun overall, though. I think I'm at that annoying stage where I seem to have been growing things for ages and I'm getting very little fruits of labour. I'm sure things will pick up in another month or so.

We have rats in the garden. I've known about them for a few weeks but was using the 'ignore them and they'll go away/the cat will eat them' approach to pest control. The cats murdered 3 rats for me and then gave up. The little blighters are helping themselves to the guinea pig's food and have even gnawed a hole in the top of the compost bin and stolen anything that looks tasty. I've ordered some bait boxes and poison blocks. Otherwise I can just tell that we'll be in for a Summer of rats stealing all our vegetables.

And in other news, I think I've decided to get chickens! I'd like one of these for ease of cleaning:

It's an Eglu Classic. I REALLY like the look of the Cube but sadly I think it would take up too much space. I could keep 3 hens in the above, although I'd like them to be free range when I'm at home, so I'll need to protect my trees and veggies from them. I'm sooooo excited at the thought of having our own eggs. I think I'll be waiting until the end of August/beginning of September because we'll be away a few times over the Summer and I don't want to leave brand new hens behind. This will also give me a chance to save, something that I am not very good at when I have access to a credit card!

Bloody caterpillars

This is what they are doing to my apples. :(

Garden update

Things are coming on well. My greenhouse is full of seedlings..

The things on the floor are sweetcorn and beans, and they're threatening to take over the world. I think I may have to plant them out at the weekend and hope the temperatures stay as they are (or above!)

The fruit is growing very well, although the blueberries are all withering and dropping off the bush, so I think I need to plant a little friend for them.

Sunset apples

 Scrumptious apples

Strawberries

Not so baby plums

Alpine strawberries. These have done SO much better than I ever thought they would.










 And in other exciting garden news, we ate our first cabbage of the season yesterday, and it was so yummy that even the girls cleared their plates! The others aren't quite as 'solid' in the middle. I hope they'll fatten up soon because I need the space they're in for the epic corn.

Note to self

In future, do not let rainbow chard go to seed. Then, do not plant beetroot in the *exact* same spot that rainbow chard will try to re-establish itself. I have no idea which is which!

A learning curve

A little over a year ago, Amelia and I planted a blueberry bush in a tub of ericaceous compost.

 It grew a lot, and produced leaves, but not a single blueberry did it grow that Summer. We were very disappointed.

Fast forward to now, and it's covered in hundreds of little pinky purple buds. I've been watching them closely, expecting them to open into flowers and turn into blueberries in much the same way that our other fruits do. But apparently that's not how blueberries grow! They are currently looking like this:

 

 The buds simply inflate into hollow, white spheres. They remind me of those round paper lightshades people have on their ceilings. I pressume they will get plumper and purpler over time.

I'd better look into netting them so the birds don't get to them first! Hopefully we'll have enough to make a batch of muffins as well as eating them raw. Yum.

In plum tree news, I am very excited because some of the flowers are now looking like this (excuse poor focus, the camera was very confused!):

BABY PLUMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Blossom

I've been very busy over the past six weeks. I think I've started off all of my pot grown vegetables now, although I'll need to keep sowing things like carrots, lettuce and beetroot every so often. My garden is under threat from weeds. I have never, ever seen it so bad and I'm sure I've weeded more this year than ever before! I must get out there and sort it out properly. It's been unseasonably warm, but apparently the nice weather is over now and it'll be much cooler and wetter for the forseeable future. I think the garden needs the rain.

The most exciting thing is that my fruit trees are waking up and blossoming, so I thought I'd share some photos.

A snail going for a slither on the plum tree, which was the first to blossom.

This is what it looks like now, two weeks later. I'm constantly inspecting the flowers to see if there's any sign of some little plums growing!

Cherry blossom. I MUST get this covered in netting this year. I'm not losing all the cherries to pesky birds again!

Apple blossom. This is the Sunset variety (excuse the weeds in the background!). Two of the newest apple trees, Red Devil and Scrumptious, are also starting to flower, but Broadholme Beauty, Bramley's Seedling, and the solo pear tree are only producing leaves this year.

Forced rhubarb

I planted a rhubarb crown about 3 or possibly even 4 years ago, and to be honest, it's never done very well. It's given us enough for a crumble or two, but it's nothing on the enormous crops you'd expect from a plant of this age. I must admit that I don't do much to it, so it's probably my own fault.

This year I've tried forcing, first with a black plant pot, and when it grew too big, a gorilla tub. And it's worked! Today we had our very first rhubarb (and apple) crumble of the season.

Rhubarb uncovered!

 My little helper

Cutting the rhubarb and apples with the new Pampered Chef kid safe knife

 Crumble! I love how forced rhubarb keeps its lovely pink colour. Millie had 3 helpings!!