20-05-25

Good morning, again, everyone, and welcome to Tuesday.  The sun is trying to shine and today's forecast is good although tomorrow's says maybe a bit of rain.  We need a good, steady downpour, the farmers even more so, but we will see.  I won't complain, for sure.

I continued my Sungold hunt yesterday, trying Longacres and then B&Q but, sadly, no luck in either place.  I could buy online but they are phenomenally expensive so sorry, but no thanks.
I will try further afield tomorrow (or, maybe, this afternoon) and if there's no luck then I will do without.  I won't be short of tomatoes, that's for sure.

I did come home with stuff though - some bedding plugs, some larger flowering plants, a chilli pepper, some cucumbers, a curly leaf parsley and, yes, some tomatoes.  I will list the various varieties I have now another time but I have some photos so here we go!

Here we go with five in pots.  You can see the difference in maturity between the two from Grenville's and the three from Longacres but they all seem nice and healthy.

The ones I put in the bed.  Seven plants, all from Grenville and those specks are slow release food for them.

As well as those, Chris is giving me two Sweet Millions (lovely) and two Moneymakers.  Dad always said don't get Moneymakers - they are not that flavoursome and the reviews seem to support that, calling them 'mild' and 'not very intense' but no way am I turning down  free tomato plants and cooking in olive oil makes for a great flavour anyway, regardless.

And a couple of Tumbling Toms, one red and one yellow.  Tomatoes with character and it's nice not to have to pinch out the side shoots!  :-)

Not the best photo but in this bed I have planted a couple of Stocks (I love Stocks), another dahlia and a dianthus to replace the one that's all woody and ugly - they can flower side by side this season and I will have the old one out come the autumn and shift the new one slightly to fill that space.  That's the plan, anyway.

The plugs are Snapdragons, Sweet Williams and - oh, I forget - Salvia, I think and they are in smaller pots that I can move round for best effect.

Three cucumbers.  These produce all female flowers so we will see how it pans out.  

I've been saving washed and dries eggshells for ages now.  Some have been crushed very finely and have gone into the soil around the tomatoes.  I read somewhere that this helps precent blossom end rot.

And some, as you can see, have been roughly crushed and are there to prevent slugs and snails from scoffing my cucumbers.  Yes, there are a few slug pellets too - belt and braces, folks.

Sorry!

And, finally (for now), an Apache chilli.  I never have luck with the big, mild peppers but chillies seem to do very nicely and my experience is that one plant provides more than I can give away!!

Hopefully, this one won't prove me wrong.

I have some mixed leaves seeds which I will sow into sundry little pots from time to time - I ought to start that today really. 

Apart from tomatoes, I think that is pretty much it for this summer now.  In a little, easy-care garden like mine, there's a limit to what I can grow and how much.

So this year, I have, in no particular order:

blueberries (loads of blueberries)

raspberries

herbs - oregano, chives, mints, sage, thyme, parsley, rosemary and bay

cucumbers

runner beans

tomatoes

and leaves (when I get round to it)

Sadly, no pears and no apples.  Oh, well.

Plus some flowers and some leafage.

After coming home from the Governors' Training (very good indeed), I set to and spent the rest of a lovely, warm afternoon planting everything out, etc.  It was lovely.

Today starts with Groove (no Chris this week), then I MUST do the downstairs housework before gallivanting off to some more garden centres on my Sungold hunt.  I am tasking no bets on whether I come back with anything else or not!

I forgot to mention above that I got two loads of washing on the line and dried but no ironing so that is also on the list but I can do that while watching telly later.

Well, better get started with the morning Facebook duties and then get ready for Groove.  I'm expecting this to be a very satisfying sort of day and I hope yours is too!  xx