The Veg Plot - May

May has been a crazy busy month on the veg plot and there have been a lot of jobs that, if not done now, would have undone all of the hard work that we've already put in.

On the fruit side, we've had the first flowers on the strawberries, which are looking very promising.  We've also got the start of blueberries, Morello cherries and a few Braeburn apples. There is nothing on our plum tree, which is really disappointing, but the quince is looking good.

All of the seeds we planted are doing well and the carrots, spring onions, radishes and watercress (which we've never grown before) are all looking good.

We've planted out our beetroot, parsnips and shallots in the raised beds.  We had hung onto a few excess parsnip seedlings, just in case.  We're glad we did as we've had to replace some which fell foul to slug damage.

We've also planted out the French climbing beans, which we grew from bean seeds saved from last year's crop, in toilet roll middles, along with a batch of leeks, which we resorted to buying from the garden centre!

For technical reasons, we've planted the leeks in black and white!!  I'm blaming Martin.

We've thinned out salad leaves, which are now planted all over the place and we've also done well with our first tomato plants grown from seed. 

We've built up the two tomato greenhouses and moved the tomatoes to their final location.  We've got a real variety this year.  Two old favourites, Moneymaker, a salad tomato, and Gardeners' Delight, a sweet cherry.  These always do well, as long as we can avoid any signs of blight.

We're also trying two new varieties this year, Maksota and Tigerella.  We'll be interested to see how these turn out.

We've also potted on the courgettes, cucumbers and chillis and planted out the butternut squash. 

Now we've done all of that, it's just a case of watering, feeding, waiting and harvesting the fruits of our labour.  We can't wait.