Beetroot, melon and sun

The big news this week is that the digging of the veg patch is done! Jim went all out and dug for eight hours one day just to get it done. Now we are hard at work weeding between the beds and putting down weed-suppressing fabric weighed down with the hundreds of stones that Jim quarried while digging.

Chilli flowers, with empty salad pond behind

The other big job this week was hedge maintenance. Since a lot depends on us creating a good wind break it was time for some TLC on the budding hedge. The usual suspects, bracken, ground elder, nettle and dock, had been doing their damnedest to overwhelm the blackthorn, but now all that has been cleared and the hedge is looking good. Only three out of 225 didn't take.

Blackthorn windbreak hedge coming along

Our first salad leaves - tatsoi and mustard - were finally past their best so I've resown the salad pond with chicory, endive and a couple of frilly lettuces. The rocket and cress are also getting towards their end, but the little gems are just coming on stream. Next year, I'll get into successive sowings a bit more. This year, I've been only doing that for rocket, cress, carrots, radishes and beetroot.

Beetroot Boltardy

We've been eating beetroot all week and it's been so good I went out and sowed another couple of rows. What a great plant - it's like getting two things for the price of one. The leaves are just as tasty as any spinach. I'm wondering whether to dispense with growing spinach and just have beetroot. Next year, they will get a whole bed to themselves.

Courgette Nimba looking happy again after copious feeding

Oregon Sugar Pod pea flowers

Christmas Drumhead Cabbage is hearting up

The potatoes are growing enormous and have started to flower

First glimpse of a Broccoli Romanesco

I have received more gardening gifts this week. That's one thing I love about gardening. You give a lot of nice things and get some fantastic plants and produce in return. My neighbour brought me two cantaloupe melon plants as a thank-you for the four tomato plants I'd given him a couple of months ago. And one of my friends gave some old watermelon seeds since he wasn't realistically going to grow them in his tenement garden. Two of them have come up so far.

Gifts of melon

Melon had been on my list to try for next year, but I can see that one of the main challenges will be keeping down the number of gardening projects I've got going at any one time. It's all so tempting.

Summer has finally arrived and we've had to water the plants outside. Unheard of. Previously we had so much rain that quite a few of the squashes rotted on the vine, despite not touching the ground. Is there anything that can be done to avoid that?

Anyway, we now have sun and plenty of it. The previous owners had set up a clever rain water collection system, whereby the rain water runs from the house down to half a dozen collection barrels and from there to a tap in the veg garden. After watering the entire patch the water level was only down by about a fifth so there should be plenty until the next rain.

There shall be blueberries

The only thing that just won't grow is the rhubarb. We'd already moved it once to a better site, but its one and only leaf just turned yellow and whithered this week. I have now unceremoniously dumped it in one of the compost bins. That's its last chance. Otherwise I'll try to grow it from seed next year and plant it into a well-manured bed.

One other exciting bit of news: I treated myself to a number of tea herbs and four lots of hops in pots. Happy home brewing ahead.