This evening we picked our first harvest; thirteen beautiful big strawberries. (And just two months after getting the baby plants in the post!) I know it’s a cliché, but they really are the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted! We laid straw underneath the plants at last to keep the fruit off the soil, so hopefully there will be plenty more soon!
My lovely mum bought me a box of petunia plants which I planted around the asparagus the other day, and while there are still a few asparagus beetles around, the numbers do seem to be reduced. Hopefully as the plants get bigger they’ll do even better at keeping the beasts away. The flowers make a nice splash of colour anyway, and some of our marigolds and nasturtiums around the place have started flowering at last too.
The lavender has started flowering as well, although it’s swamped by weeds, like most other things. We’ve had a lot of rain recently and it’s really not helping in the battle against the green carpet that comes from nowhere and spreads over everything!
The beans are pretty swamped too, but they’re making a good effort and have started climbing up their canes. The pesky slugs are still doing them some damage, but the battle continues...
And the borage is about to burst into flower, which will help attract more bees and predatory insects. You can see one above between the bean rows; there are quite a few dotted around.
I had thought our first harvest would be new potatoes or lettuce leaves; our patchwork of lettuces is growing nicely (though it could do with a good weeding like everything else!) and the potatoes are flowering with enthusiasm. It’ll only be a couple of weeks before we start picking these too!
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