in the garden ::

After a week away and lots of sunny/rainy days, the garden was looking dramatically different when we returned.

The emergence of some lovely flowers and the harvesting of lots of food have been this weeks main activities.

We've been eating ::

• courgettes (lots!)
• cucumbers
• potatoes
• spring onion
• onion
• peas (those that haven't been munched away by whatever invisible nuisance it is that's destroying my pea plants)
• raspberries
• strawberries

The potatoes and the cucumber are the big exciting ones for me this week, I failed miserably with both last year. Particularly the cucumbers which all died, despite my over zealous seed sowing. As the first few plants I moved outside and to the greenhouse experienced the same fate as last years, I decided just to keep a couple in the house growing up the patio doors. This has worked so well. The vines are lovely and almost the height of the door now, plus they are full of little cucumbers! We've harvested 2 fairly small ones so far, but they were so deliciously sweet, almost like melon.

As for potatoes, last year my plants looked so good and then died off quite suddenly, I assumed therefore they were ready, but was super disappointed to discover only a handful of too small to do anything with potatoes under the compost. I guess, as is quite often the case with me, I was just too impatient. This year I planted masses of different kinds of potatoes in a variety of large buckets and old compost bags, most of them have grown huge foliage which is taking up a large corner of my garden, I had a fairly promising feeling about them, even if I was a little worried I may have put too many seeds in each pot, after reading one of my favourite bloggers post on her own potato planting. But before I headed off on holiday 2 of my plants were looking positively dead, I gave them a really good watering before I left and crossed my fingers, hoping for a miracle when I returned. However both plants remained dead a week later, so without expecting much I decided to turn them out and see what, if anything was there. Well I was beyond thrilled with what I discovered! Each bag provided enough for one meal, OK so perhaps not brilliant, but given the circumstances I was super pleased. Not only that they tasted fabulous! The others are all flowering now and I am trying my best to have a little patience, I know it will be worth it.

I also lifted the onions and garlic this week, they are all drying outside under cover. I'm pretty pleased with these too. The garlic was fairly small, but the onions are great and considering they were all grown in smallish troughs I think they've done quite well.