Thursday 7 May 2015

May already

flower

Haven't really been keeping up with the posting, weather and mood have both been bad. Still, here are a few recent pictures. The gazania above came from the local garden centre, a bit of an impulse purchase that has no place in the garden to go really. I will have to pot it up by itself and use it as an accent in some sunny corner.

We went to the garden centre hoping to get globe artichoke plants but at 12€ each that was obviously a non-starter. That 12€ would have bought us about 10 big heads from the supermarket even this early in the season, and they don't do particularly well here, I just like to have them. I'll start some more from seed, probably not until next winter now.

baby apricot

The new apricot tree has set three little fruit. I think they can be left on the tree without stunting it in its first year and it will interesting to see what they're like. The apples are in full flower now, particularly pretty is the Ellison's Orange which is a nicely shaped little tree - I don't think it can be a maiden even though that's what we paid for. Unfortunately massively strong winds over the last two days have broken a small branch from the Victoria plum. I've popped it into a propagator in the hope of rooting it but really there's little chance of it taking. The actual tree will survive but it is very brittle, it was one of the only trees to suffer during transport over here.

Wisteria

A wisteria gifted to us when we got here by Paul's mum. She gave us three and I killed two of them but this is hanging on in and this year the flowers have avoided the slugs. Needs more TLC but I'm pleased so far.

tunnel cloche

I'm not a big fan of complications in the veg. patch and find most cloche and floating row covers more trouble than they're worth but I wanted to try some tomatoes in the ground and thought some shelter would bring them on more quickly and provide a measure of protection from blight spores. It's an experiment and the cloche is a very cheap one which is barely going to be big enough to take four bush tomatoes although I'd hoped to get six in. Still, we'll see how it does. I'm still hoping to tuck a couple of rock melons in at either end, no idea if that's a suitable companion planting!




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