Dairy of a permaculture (ish) garden, July 2018.

It's been another month of it's-too-hot-to-garden weather here, with a bit of it's-too-wet-to-garden weather at the end!

I'm looking forward to these apples ripening.  I think I shouldn't have let this tree make apples this year because it's a new one, but they're so pretty I couldn't resist. 

My side garden, which is the fruity bit of the garden, is looking good.   There's just one bit at the far end by the gate that's full of weeds, the rest is full of lovely productive fruit trees, raspberries and herbs, yey!  And I'm clearing the weeds away slowly when I have new plants to replace them with.  This month I've added chives and garlic chives, rosemary, strawberries and a tiny rose to replace some of the weeds.

My apple tree's recovering from it's ant/aphid attack last month.  I noticed a few aphids coming back, and I was about to start picking them off when I spotted a mama ladybird and some babies, so I'm going to leave it to nature to sort out.  Thanks nature.

I'm very late with all my planting this year (For which I blame the weather.  For which I blame climate change.  For which I blame our governments for doing nothing about it.  Anyway...) so I've just got round to planting out courgettes and shallots. 

I'm surprised the shallots actually sprouted because I bought them from the Wilko's sale for 50p and had them hanging round the house for a couple of months after that.  My one courgette plant looks ok in this photos, but actually isn't very happy in the middle of the clover cover crop, so I think I'll remove the clover to give it more of a chance.

Everything looks a mess at the moment (although I have since straightened up the falling over kale at least!) especially round the raised beds.  I've let the chard flower, and it's attracted so many hoverflies and other interesting insects that I can't bring myself to cut it back, even if it is flopping all over the place.

I've planted some tiny and sorry looking leeks I started off months ago into this raised bed, and you can see the ginger (in the terracotta pot) has been enjoying the heat, I wonder if it'll flower, of if I'll get any ginger root to harvest!?

I'm most proud of this little space.  I got rid of an old rickety garden table and replaced it with a tea trolley I bought for £2 that I'm going to modify into a potting bench.  There's room now for a couple of chairs so we can sit outside together.

Can you see my tomatoes in my big basket planter?  They've gone for it this month!  There are a few cherry tomatoes waiting to ripen on them already, which isn't bad because I planted them really late.  I planted purple mange tout round the edges of the basket and I've been picking lots of those too.

It rained!  And it filled my waterbutt all the way up!  And it's raining again now.  Thank goodness. 

I chopped down all the gone-over foxgloves and all the crispy bits of things that got fried in the 30 degree heat, the garden looks a little bare but I'm sure it'll bounce back in a couple of weeks.

That's it for my garden this month. I'll leave you with this pretty white flower, I can't remember the name of the plant right now, but the flower bud starts off like a little box and then they burst open into these beautiful blooms. 

How's your garden growing? 

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