Slow progress in the "Potager"

This is our first real planting season in the vegetable garden since we arrived last August and we are a little disappointed in that we seem to have what I call a cold garden. There are some tall trees in our neighbough's rear garden that restrict the sunshine for a few hours each day so consequently the frost that we have been having lately hangs around longer.
Of course this will change as we get further into Spring with the sun higher in the sky.

However, I have been busy and have put in loads of potatoes, onions, shallots, beetroot, turnip, parsnips, cabbage, carrots, asparagus, garlic and broad beans. At least the broad beans are starting to look OK

I have probably put in too many at one time ( 5 rows ) and will be putting more in later spaced out by a few weeks but I am sure if we have too many I can find some friends who would enjoy them.

I did get a head start with the fruit garden in the Autumn and the raspberries most of which were just sticks! are now coming on quite well and the rhubarb has got going at last.

It is also encouraging to see that all of the fruit trees we put in are starting to blossom.

I also got round to mowing the rear lawn for the first time this year, like everyone else in Brittany it seems we have a lot of moss in it! 

One job I have had to put on the "back burner" for a while is the cutting of my trees. There has been a pigeon building a nest in them for weeks and after watching it carefully selecting sticks and flying in and out hundreds of times I haven't the heart to disturb it . There will be plenty of time later on although I do what to get it all done this year as the difference in light and sunshine to the decking area is incredible.

Spring is here

I love this time of the year with all the Months of Spring and Summer ahead of us. The weather is still quite changeable with colder showery days but already there are some days when the sun is out and the temperature is beginning to reach the high teens.

We have birds busy building nests both at the front and rear of the house, at the back we have a pigeon who totally ignores me even at close quarters as she selects twigs for her nest and then has to make a complicated flying maneuver to get between the branches of a fir tree to build it in.
At the front we have a magpie building a huge nest right at the very top of a tall tree. It's fascinating to watch it carefully selecting the right twig then having to make it's way right up though the tree to the top without dropping it which it does often!

I finished off the final few bits to the decking area and formed a flower bed around it and put in some roses and also a black grapevine that I'm hoping to train up over the pergola.

I've now moved onto the garden in a serious way, I think we are in a bit of a cold spot so It's obviously not going to be an "early" garden but I'm getting excited about all the fruit and veg we are going to grow in the future.

Talking about getting excited, I really must be turning into a farmer, I never thought I'd get excited about buying a plough but I am! I put an advert on a local Brittany forum asking If anyone had one for sale and yesterday had a reply.
So today I am the proud owner of a plough.

"We plough the fields and scatter
The good seed on the land"


I have quite a large area that I would like to extend the garden into but without ploughing it I really think it would have beyond me to do. I've never used a plough so If my furrows are not quite straight "cest la vie"!


I have already rotavated quite a large area of ground and have so far sown carrot seeds, put in a row of onion sets and yesterday put in the first row of early potatoes.