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.