Le potager familial en mois de juillet 2016

Allotment update time! The most recent update of the allotment was at the end of May. We are now 60 days further down the road and I believe the growth in the allotment is slowly becoming clear. I had to work with a lot of new things (pests and general circumstances) that made things more difficult than necessary, but I think I’ve overcome most of them. The things that I didn’t overcome this year, will be learning points for next year.

This update will be mostly in images. I’m sorry for that, but my hands are still recovering (my right hand still hurts a lot when I work too much), so I can’t type a lot. Hopefully I can pick up my blogging full speed again in september. Fingers crossed!

For now a short post. So, what happened the last two months? Well I mostly planted things out. Over, and over again. I tried to plant out things at a higher speed than the slugs ate my plants. At one point I think I won. Although the slugs still eat my fruit, courgettes and even my potatoes. Yes, the UNDERGROUND potatoes! Argh.
What we also did is that we set up a watering system, which works well. A little too well though. Things are a bit too wet right now, I have to figure out how to balance this out properly, especially when I’m done adding the mulch.
Ah and harvests. We also harvested a few things these last few months. We didn’t harvest a whole lot, as the slugs were harvesting in the nights as I mentioned before. What we did harvest was fruit. Lots of soft fruit. So that was pretty cool.

And what will happen the upcoming months? Well first of all I will mulch the garden. I found a farmer in our village that sold very affordable hay bales. Last week we visited those stables and got six bales from the farmer. We brought them home first, so that we could use them for a dinner party we hosted yesterday. Unfortunately the weather turned wet and dark for us, so we had to move indoors and we didn’t use the bales as seating. What we did use for the dinner were a lot of herbs and flowers from the garden. Beautiful and tasty! We ended up moving the bales up to the allotment today, upcoming week I can be found on the plot mulching my way around the beds.

I’m also expecting to harvest the first (big) tomatoes this upcoming period. The potatoes will also be lifted, hopefully they won’t be perforated by slugs. Most probably we will also harvest the plums from our big tree and some more things. I also saw that the strawberries started forming flowers again, so I’m guessing that we will have another strawberry crop. Well, I’ll keep you updated.

What I also noticed this year is that the corn is growing really well. I have planted three types of corn on different spots in the garden and they are all growing well. Hopefully we will be able to harvest some colorful corn this year.
Below you can see my cucumber trellis. The plants are growing well, but I have no fruits that are forming. Strange. Courgettes are growing well as well, but slugs are still having night-feasts on them. Fortunately they don’t like patissons, so we are enjoying those a lot this year. I’m harvesting them small (5cm in diameter), because I like them better that way.

What more can I tell. Our sweet peas are amazing this year. I’m harvesting them weekly to give our bathroom a nice smell. On the last picture of this post, you can find todays harvest. Our beans are also growing well. It’s a pity that I don’t have longer bamboo poles. I will have to put some effort into finding those next year. Ah yes, and we now also have chairs under our plum-tree. I used to sit on a picnic cloth when I was at the allotment, but Eduard preferred to have chairs there, so he bought two (what I find – romantic) chairs. Don’t they look pretty there around our blue woven chest?

I think that’s about it for this month. My hands are starting to itch, so I’ve done more than I was supposed to. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and the update. I would love to see your July garden as well. Please share the link below, or link your pictures on Instagram with #sowgrowharvestfeast and I’ll come by to see them!

More July garden updates: July 2014