Sunny Skies, Happy Days

Am writing this post with a sunburnt back....funny how us Celts/Vikings/whatever we are, never learn the power of the sun on our fair skin, but how good does it feel to have a glow instead of a shiver - I'm loving the decent dose of vitamin D that so many of us lack (and that "they" now think the lack of is linked to so many of our health problems). That's my excuse anyway..where was I...off topic as usual.

The veg garden is now starting to look like a veg garden as opposed to a sorry excuse for one, this Spring it was so pathetic that I almost decided to skip veg this year and only the impending garden group visits and open weekends shamed me into getting my act together. And lo and behold, sowing a lot of stuff later than usual, in modules in the tunnel (beetroot, spinach, rainbow chard, rocket, mustard leaves etc) and then planting out is very satisfying as you have an instant effect, plants are more robust to fight off slugs etc.

The strawberries have been netted for the first time against the birds and we're having a bumper crop, they taste superb - as does any good home grown produce v supermarket offering.

The redcurrants and blackcurrants are still behind and rather poorly cropping this year as they are intermixed, not labelled, and therefore never pruned properly (redcurrants - you prune each branch to a third of its original length, whereas blackcurrants you prune one third of the oldest stems to the base). In winter, almost all of the branches were heavily pruned and so, we have hardly any blackcurrants. Lesson learnt - label your plants properly!

Susie loves redcurrants and gleans more than the blackbird, when they're still tart & hardly ripe, strange taste buds my daughter, from an early age, she could be found eating peppery nasturtium leaves, calendula flowers, beech leaves from the hedge, parsley by the bucket load, we could hardly grow enough to keep up!