At last - its warm!

susygaisford — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:44:53 +0000

Its hard to believe just how cold it was in the early part of May. Temperatures were down around 11 Celcius – thats just 50 Fahrenheit which is no weather for growing food crops. The summer squash and cucumbers are refusing to germinate and who can blame them. We have started runner beans and pea beans in the greenhouse and these were needing planting out while the weather was still cold. They are now planted out just as the weather warmed so thats working out better than you might have imagined.. I like to grow some Italian climbing beans and I have just planted those in pots in the greenhouse, knowing that they just hate cold and will refuse to grow until we achieve something like Tuscan temperatures. These are Trionfo violetta and borlotti. The first are a long purple bean – easy to prepare in the kitchen and delicious to eat. The borlotti we leave to mature and harvest the beans dry for lovely soups in the winter!

Big news – first lettuce harvested from the garden. Wonderful. We will have enough salad to open a shop soon as the plants were held back by the cold and we kept on planting more in the greenhouse!

In the flower garden the first roses are in bloom – Madame Alfred Carrier is a very vigorous rambler and hard to contain but has a lovely scent – and flowers early. SOme of the roses have yellowing leaves. I suppose its a fungal disease thats has flourished in the strange weather. I will need to see how that works out as I am not keen on spraying roses!

Maybe some pictures tomorrow!

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At last - its warm!