Categories: uncategorized
Date: 21 June 2007 17:09:04
my mangetout plants have grown apace, and today i picked the first crop - yay! ok, so it was less than a dozen pods all a bit on the small side, but it is the promise of things to come. i also thinned out the french bean seedlings so when the mangetout finish hopefully we'll have beans.
then there's the brassicas. a friend gave me some brassica plants, i think they're kale and broccoli though i don't know which are which. so i've put them in and tried to cover them with netting over a frame made from gazebo poles (eat your heart out, o moustachio'd one!). the last (and only) time i grew brassicas they were completely demolished by caterpillars leaving very fat catepillars and very stringy plants, so i'm trying to avoid that this time. my problem stems from the width of the netting: it's not wide enough to go over the whole frame, so i've got two pieces on but one keeps blowing off. i think i'm going to have to resort to a needle and thread, quite literally, and then at least it'll fit the frame even if i can't get it off very easily.
i finally managed to plant out the courgette plant, another gift, this time from a colleague of hubby's so he had to bring it home from work on the train. it's a lovely plant, or at least it was till it came here. anyway, its in the ground now, with a cardboard mulch around it, so hopefully we might see some courgettes later on too. i've never had the problem of too many courgettes, in fact i've never had more than two, but we love them so bring it on!