Produce, or lack of it

I have to say I am somewhat disappointed in my gardening efforts this first year over here, we seem to have a whole host of things that are preventing us from being self sufficient. The one thing I am determined to do is to learn from it and try different things and ways next year.

First of all I got sucked in by the beautiful warm/hot weather we had in early March, around 22/23c some days. I started on the garden far too soon, I shall take more notice of my French neighbours next year and delay starting anything much before late April.

Our peas, broad beans, parsnips, garlic etc are not even Worth mentioning!

Another thing I have come to realise is that the row of big fir trees I am lopping off have sucked all the goodness out of the ground, I desperately need to get some manure on the ground in the Autumn and try and get some goodness into it.

A problem that I am going to have more difficulty with though is the deer, last night they grazed off the tops of nearly all of the strawberry plants and half of next year's growth of the raspberry's.

On the plus side, although I haven't got Mandy's  problem of trying to keep up with the harvest, we are at last starting to take produce from the garden most days. The turnips are doing very well and are being picked every day whilst young and lovely to eat, we have started to eat carrots and should have enough to keep us going throughout the summer and maybe the Autumn. Although the potatoes are now starting to be affected by blight, due to the lousy weather I suspect,  I dug the first of them today and they are looking not to bad.

Potager progress

I though I would share a few photos of the vegetable garden, things have been pretty slow getting going here in Brittany and I think in retrospect that I was far to keen to get stuff into the ground and growing. I have talked to a number of people in this area and it seems like It's not worth starting planting until late April. So next year I shall take notice.

However things are moving at last and the potatoes at least are looking pretty good, just had a few of them touched by the frost, I've planted 7 rows of them mostly Charlotte so I'm hopeful for a good crop.

The broad beans that we started off in pots indoors and planted out in March have been overtaken by the beans that I planted directly into the ground soon after so that's a mistake that I won't make again in the future.

In addition, I have also planted out turnips, peas, garlic, carrots, shallots and broccoli which are all up now and beetroot, parsnip and cabbage.