Back again!

I cannot believe it is the best part of a year since my last blog post, where does the time go to? I am determined to start making regular posts again so I really would appreciate anybody who is reading this to comment which we give me that much more incentive 👍

This year has been the best ever in the garden in terms of produce, we have had a huge amount of beans, both runner and french beans and some superb potatoes, I have enough potatoes put away to last us all year. Unfortunately we had a very late and very hard frost one night that killed off all of the blossom on the apple trees with the result that we haven't got a single apple this year!

This is our pumpkin patch on our "Back to Eden" garden, a record amount of pumpkins this year, 30+ the biggest must be getting on for a 100 lbs in weight already!
Now that we are getting into Autumn I have an annual job in cutting back the vegetation on the bank on our driveway to the house, it must be nearly a 100 yards long so takes me quite a while and maybe up to 25 full wheelbarrow loads of grass/saplings/brambles/ferns etc

Some of the saplings growing out of the oak trees that have been cut down in the past have grown 4 feet since I cut them back last year, as you can see from the ladder propped against the bank it is quite high.

Well that's it for this update but hopefully not long before the next so please comment if you would to give me some encouragement.

Garden update

I'm feeling a little bit better about our garden produce today. As I said in the previous post the potatoes are suffering from blight with the leaves starting to go black.
Although I would have liked to have left them in the ground longer to get a bit bigger I decided that I would be better off digging them up now on the assumption that If they have blight they are unlikely to grow anymore and perhaps it could affect the potatoes themselves.

As you can see I have a healthy amount of potatoes coming out and to the left the leeks and T
turnips are doing OK as well.
I shall learn from all of this and next year will perhaps stick to putting in crops that I know have done well this year plus I hope to get a load of horse manure onto the ground before winter.

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.