Spring in the Garden

Spring in the Garden

Monday 13 August 2012

While We Turned Our Backs

A few days after my last post for 'Notes on a Garden' we went on holiday to the Ionian island of Kefalonia (Kefallinia).

They had luscious grapes growing everywhere.


Courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes were also growing well in many gardens.


Unfortunately when we got home we found our own garden was not doing so well.

The cabbages weren't doing too badly, although the slugs and snails were obviously attacking some of them.



The new strawberry plants are looking good, if somewhat overgrown. A good session of weeding will put that right, when I've got some energy. Mind you, we want to leave some flowers for the bees.


Our first hive of bees seem to be doing well, although we acquired them too late in the season to expect any honey this year. Due to the bad weather most of the summer we are feeding them sugar solution.



Thursday before last we acquired a second, smaller colony known as a nuc(leus).


Our legumes, however, are not thriving. The peas are past it, between the slugs and the warm, dry weather back home during the second week of our holiday.




The French beans were clinging on to life, but the slugs and snails have removed all their leaves now in spite of another application of slug pellets.




We still have a few runner bean plants left, which are producing beans, 3 of at least 7.



4 comments:

  1. Sounds like your garden is in about the same state as mine. The only sucess has been the potatoes, leeks and stuff in the greenhouse. I officially hate slugs!

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  2. Not sure about the potatoes and onions, we need to dig them up. Hasn't it been a dire year for gardens, though. Slugs and snails seem to be doing far too well. I'm going to have to use more slug pellets. An occasional sprinkling used to keep them under control, but it doesn't work now. I only use Growing Success pellets, though, as they are meant to be harmless to non-molluscs.

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  3. Glad to know it's not just me...Hardly a bean this year, and no mange tout at all. The late stuff - squash and sweetcorn - has been quite good, though, I guess it benefited from the bit of warmer late-summer weather...?

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  4. From what I've heard it's been pretty bad for lots of crops. Later crops did seem to do better on the whole. Even the farmers are saying they've had a really tough time of it this year.

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I look forward to reading your comments, it's always good to hear encouraging words or relevant hints and tips.