A rose from A Rose

My beautiful ff roses are blooming again. This year I dedicate my roses in bloom to Geoff. x 

Rhododendron flowers, onions and stawberries

The rhododendron flowers are blooming! Such a vibrant red.

I harvested 2 onions today. I can't remember what variety they are, but they're white, and taste like spring onions. 

The rest are starting to flower, Dad says cut off the flowers to preserve the energy in the onions...

 But they're so pretty! I put them in a little vase in the house.

I harvested 9 alpine strawberries today.

 

Here's a pic of a cool scarecrow, spotted in Pontyclun allotments the other day.

The slugs continue to eat the broadbeans and flowers, here's a good article my Dad spotted in the Telegraph, about dealing with slugs in an organic garden.

The slug experiment

So I've been using Slug Gone - and organic and environmentally friendly (and slug friendly) way off keeping these pests off my plants. 

It's been successful, here on the left I planted peas using Slug Gone, and on the right I planted peas without it. The peas on the left are doing much better. 

The sweetcorn haven't been nibbled one bit. 

But I put Slug Gone round this busy lizzy plant, and it's the plant that's gone, not the slug...

And some of my broad beans have been fattening up those slugs too, they are rather savaged. 

 Pesky pesky slugs.

Reds, and pinks and yellow and white and purple

I mostly focus on growing the vegetables in my garden, so the flowers growing are a lovely surprise. They are all plants given to me (like the rhododendrons and foxgloves), or wild flowers that have self seeded or grown from previous years (like the poppies and alpine strawberries). So pretty.

Cowbridge Physic Garden

Have you ever been to the Cowbridge Physic Garden? It's lovely. It's a small garden, and is filled with medicinal plants and herbs, in different sections representing different parts of the body or ailments, so there's a section for plants that are good for the digestive system, or your kidneys. There's a wonderful fragrant section, and even a dye section, with plants that have been used to dye fabrics. It's worth visiting at lots of different times of the year as it's forever changing, it's always beautiful and it's very peaceful. 

We visited on the same day as the Cowbridge Farmers Market (every other Saturday), also well worth a trip for!

Trained fruit trees

A Jubilee Crown sculpture

A bee busy enjoying the chive flowers

A fragrant rose 

Blooming elderflower (we also enjoyed a cup of Elderflower cordial from the Farmers market!)

The first alpine strawberries

Last week I harvested the first of the alpine strawberries. They are amazing, like little sweets. They never last long enough to put them in a dessert, I just eat them in the garden. Yum.

This photo was taken a few days ago, and already the plants in the greenhouse are inches taller!

tommys

cucumber

squash (these are growing from some butternut squash I saved the seeds from last year)

3 types of peppers