The veggies in the patch have settled in and I’m very happy to say still alive.

We managed to ward off the snails and slugs and give the plants just enough food, water and sun. The only threat now was the pincing jaws of my house rabbit Del. Of course I couldn’t expect him to never go outside or hold back the temptation of munching his way through the entire patch so another barrier was constructed, just from chicken wire and a few wood posts.

The chicken wire is only about a metre or so high and most rabbits would scale that in one leap to get to the yummy treats, but not Del, the path of least resistance is the one for him. So, the veggies are still safe on that count.

All in all the veg in the patch are doing well, the cabbage, broccoli and onions are particularly healthy but the spinach is a bit sad. I think I’ll grow that in pots next time so I can treat them individually from other other types of veg.

In the greenhouse
The tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers have been moved to larger pots. Really I have way too many tomato and sweet pepper plants and should have got rid of the smaller, sickly ones but I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. I’ve found a place for the tomatoes in the green house and out in the garden so it will be interesting to see how their growth and fruit differ.

My favourites are two little jalapeno plants, I don’t really know anything about growing these, how big they’ll be or whether they’ll produce peppers this year so they are a bit of an experiment at this point.

New arrivals in the green house are lettuce, white mustard, sweetcorn (which I’m sure will be a challenge) and curly cress. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten that before but it couldn’t wait to get started so I’m sure we’ll be trying it very soon.

Cucumber crisis averted
There are about 6 cucumber plants in the greenhouse and I was worried that I might have to throw them away because they had white marks on their leaves. To an amateur like me these looked like mould or fungus. I tried to find some info about what it could be on the internet (searching under ‘cucumber diseases’) but nothing seemed to match. However, I wanted to give them a chance and re-potted them anyway and gave them wormcast food. This morning the white marks have reduced quite a lot and gone completely from some leaves so I’m assuming that it was some kind of nutrition problem. If anyone knows, I’d love for them to tell me.

Herbs
we already have a mighty mint plant and a rosemary bush which I think is intent on taking over the world, as well as sage (which seems to more or less look after itself) and a sweet little thyme plant. Other than that I’ve not been very successful growing herbs before because they always seem to get eaten or just shrivel up and die. My new batch of Basil is coming along really well though and the way they smell just gets my tummy rumbling. Imagine a completely home-grown tomato and basil pasta sauce…yum!

In fact at the weekend we had a salad with minted potatoes and our own rocket and radishes. It was very tasty indeed.

My brother-in-law bought me a whole set of various different herb seeds so they were sewn on Monday. They included marjoram, tarragon, rosemary and lots more. I can’t wait to see all the gorgeous colours, shapes and aromas they’ll produce!