Herbs are doing well in this weather. Not just for  seasoning dishes but great in home made bread.  Chooks love them but not the sage.. Strawberries have been doing well and being picked every couple of days but then this is Somerset...  Raspberries are getting bigger and still plenty  of  flowers to come. Lavender is doing well especially a couple of new plants fresh this year. Hebe is beginning to colour so the butterflies   will be around soon . Last but not least, the Onward Peas are coming on provided the chooks do not have them....

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My daughter was thrilled with her 'harvest basket'- French beans, rhubarb, raspberries, redcurrants, sorrel, spring greens and early spuds.

Turned my back for a week and the grass has really sprung up; warm nights, sun & rain- you could graze cattle on it. Out with the blades then.

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Grass - tell me about it Bert. I have been so busy and the weather so uncooperative that I am in danger of being overwhelmed. 1.5 acres of overwhelmed! Fortunately I have a solution - the Etesia Atilla 95 ride on mower/brushcutter. I can do more in a day [hiring one] than in a week with my old ride-on. If the grass starts to get boss of me, that's plan B.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr4aJ1zI9_I

We are preparing for another day of honey extraction. Most of this week has been given over to the County Show, which is great but it could not come at a more inconvenient time for beekeeping or gardening.

We have 4 enormous compost bins going - about 1m cubed each - but no grass snakes seen on them this year. 1 was spotted up the garden. The beans and sweet corn are looking good and the courgettes are doing well too. In the greenhouse the tomato plants are looking impressive. I love a tomato straight off the vine!

BTW - the pair of mallards that adopted us lost their first 4 eggs to the magpies [crime caught on camera] but on Thursday the mother duck emerged with 11 ducklings - for a final snack, a swimming lesson in the pond and a goodbye - they are back to the wild. What a well-mannered duck.

Roger

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Impressed about the grass snakes Roger. We can boast one slowworm under the shed in 2003; and despite creating a 'heath garden' in part of our garden, with a drystone wall backing it, not a single lizard in 16 years!

Some of the birds have a tough fight, don't they? I was sat in the garden with a coffee at half five this morning watching our newlywed blackbirds fighting like Spartans to keep a trio of magpies out. Tenacious.

We've had our tomatoes out, and partly shaded since late May. The warm nights here have given them a boost- flowers but no fruits yet. They are looking amazing- a metre high and deep green. I've found, in part shade, they reach up and compensate with slightly deeper roots for stability. This gives them a better reach for water if it turns dry later. All conjecture, of course, but it sounds sensible to me and it worked well in 2014 when July turned hot.

Great to see a video on Gardening!

 

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Almost exactly this time last year, when membership of TWO was an aspiration, I came off my bike in an accident. The bone breaks and deep wounds I had I believe healed quicker because I stuffed myself with peas and blackcurrants straight off the plants. Well I'm eating both this evening, almost ceremoniously, because the first deep red-jet-black currant has ripened.

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10/07/2016
Large [f?] Grass Snake basking on top of log pile in garden 8am.
Seen twice.

We were out picking redcurrants and raspberries.
Blackcurrants and gooseberries are coming along nicely.
Must remind myself on best ways to prune these.
Old age. I forget each year!

Wind is shaking the bean sticks a bit - may need to prop them up.
Roger

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The lawn is amazingly green and still growing strongly. Usually in this area there are brown patches, if not brown all over by July.

 

(For reasons see the summer moaning thread!)

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Everything is looking battered by the wind and rain in the back garden. We have two climbing roses on a South facing fence. They are weighed down with red blooms but I don`t think there`s one that`s undamaged by the weather. The garden is full of rose petals.

The pond is looking well though, we have one or two resident frogs and the tadpoles are growing legs now. I found a few tiny little frogs dead at the side of the pond yesterday morning, probably either killed by the cat or battered to death by yesterday morning`s torrential rain.

The hawthorn hedge round the front garden is growing strongly, too strongly for my liking as it`s a tiring job to trim it all every couple of weeks.

Roll on winter. 

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Everything is looking battered by the wind and rain in the back garden. We have two climbing roses on a South facing fence. They are weighed down with red blooms but I don`t think there`s one that`s undamaged by the weather. The garden is full of rose petals.

The pond is looking well though, we have one or two resident frogs and the tadpoles are growing legs now. I found a few tiny little frogs dead at the side of the pond yesterday morning, probably either killed by the cat or battered to death by yesterday morning`s torrential rain.

The hawthorn hedge round the front garden is growing strongly, too strongly for my liking as it`s a tiring job to trim it all every couple of weeks.

Roll on winter. 

All that effort is worth it for some, Bradders. The leaves are irresistible to a wealth of insects including (unsurprisingly) the hawthorn shield bug. Hawthorn is great for nesting birds, and-although this should probably go on the wild food thread- the berries make an amazing semi-sparkling and aromatic rose wine. Jealous of your hawthorn. I bet Rog has got some too, though!

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All that effort is worth it for some, Bradders. The leaves are irresistible to a wealth of insects including (unsurprisingly) the hawthorn shield bug. Hawthorn is great for nesting birds, and-although this should probably go on the wild food thread- the berries make an amazing semi-sparkling and aromatic rose wine. Jealous of your hawthorn. I bet Rog has got some too, though!

Don't remind me Bert. Our entire perimeter is a mostly-hawthorn hedge. I cut it by hand when I was younger. Now I get in a chap with the right kit! He cut it back to 4' from 12'+ this year and it is growing back well now - nice and thick. I ought to top it to keep the growth compact - but I may just leave it. It contains interesting other spp like wild plums, bullace, ash [for how long?] and hazel. Also sycamore, holly, privet and elder. Because of the cutting we shall not have much of a crop from the hawthorn this year - but generally speaking it looks like being an exceptional year for haws in this area. Hawthorn logs are good firewood BTW.

 

Roger

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All that effort is worth it for some, Bradders. The leaves are irresistible to a wealth of insects including (unsurprisingly) the hawthorn shield bug. Hawthorn is great for nesting birds, and-although this should probably go on the wild food thread- the berries make an amazing semi-sparkling and aromatic rose wine. Jealous of your hawthorn. I bet Rog has got some too, though!

I won`t ever get rid of the hedge, I`ll get somone in to trim it when I`m too old to do it myself. As you say it`s full of insects which the birds enjoy eating. We get a close up view of birds walking about on the hedge top pecking at insects, as the hedge starts close to our dining room window.

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I've spent the last 5 years developing hedges to boost shelter here - blackthorn, hawthorn, griselinia, Olearia, hazel, holly and beech. Hawthorn doing best and now about 4 feet tall - holly in the other hand much slower to flourish. Archaeologists reckon the age of a hedge by a century for every species in a ten metre length- mine must be at least 600 years old by this reckoning! Annual trim stimulates growth further down with thickening near the base.
Birds love them for nesting and insect life - and it filters out the worst if the wind, meaning more delicate plants have a chance further in. My rosa rubrifolia hedge at around 25 metres is doing well with tiny pink flowers at present and tiny red hips later in the year.

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Despite the best efforts of these boring below average temperatures, my 2-year old lemon tree is holding up well outside.

(Not sure how you add a photo from your PC on here)

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Lifted the garlic in my borders  to give the bedding plants more space to spread and got a bumper crop this year. Some have scapes which I'll use in a risotto as they have a more delicate flavour than the bulbs. Raspberries are plentiful too but not ripe yet and my black grape is laden although the green one isn', just like last year. My gojiberries haven't flowered but they're being stripped of their leaves by ants.  

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Now when the weather gets going, the butterflies come in. Watched a large white laying its sticky upright eggs on the cauli leaves; I don't mind.

Species this week:

Large white

Speckled wood

gatekeeper

holly blue

comma

small tortoiseshell

Not bad; in 1983 I had 8 species in an hour!

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Lovely to hear the above posts.

I'm about to embark on the annual pesto make! The spinach I left too long so there is only about a dozen handfuls of that, but I have huge amounts of basil. It'll be a late night!

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Just spent about 3 hours raking dead moss out of the front lawns. Sprinkled Evergreen Complete on the lawns 2 weeks ago, that`s the easy bit. Raking the dead moss out is the hard bit.

The two lawns are either side of the front path and are both under mature trees. I can only put the moss problem down to the overhanging trees. Hopefully grass will regrow where the moss was, but they both look a mess at the moment.

In the back garden I rescued a large frog from the cat last week. The frog hopped out of the undergrowth closely followed by our cat, I shouted, clapped my hands, then scooped the frog up in my hands and threw it into the pond.

 

 

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Just spent about 3 hours raking dead moss out of the front lawns. Sprinkled Evergreen Complete on the lawns 2 weeks ago, that`s the easy bit. Raking the dead moss out is the hard bit.

The two lawns are either side of the front path and are both under mature trees. I can only put the moss problem down to the overhanging trees. Hopefully grass will regrow where the moss was, but they both look a mess at the moment.

In the back garden I rescued a large frog from the cat last week. The frog hopped out of the undergrowth closely followed by our cat, I shouted, clapped my hands, then scooped the frog up in my hands and threw it into the pond.

 

 

I once had a garden with a similar moss problem to Bradders.  When I first moved in and for several  years I raked, de-mossed, fed, spiked and generally titivated the lawn. 

All to no avail.

One day my neighbour who had lived next door all her lIfe brought up the subject of my lawn struggles.  Turns out that the previous owners who lived there for over half a century had had the same problem.  Her advice was simple.  Green is a good colour for a lawn; spare myself all the hassle and focus on the rest of the garden; and I did as advised and suddenly life was easier!

A cop-out I know, but to dig up the lawn and lay drains and a great deal of screened topsoil was way beyond me. 

Good luck with the bald patches - Patch Magic is wonderful stuff.

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Japanese wineberries coming on stream - look like red blackberries, taste like raspberries but with a bit more of a tang. One plant will keep us going for a couple of weeks

It's a separate species, not a blackberry/raspberry hybrid - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubus_phoenicolasius 

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A corner of our lawn that gets very little sun, suffered a moss problem but hubby treats it with Evergreen to keep it at bay. Although I agree that green is a good colour for a lawn and moss doesn't bother me at all. 

For the past couple of weeks I've been pulling young tomato plants out of my borders. Today I realised they've come from our home made compost that we spread a few weeks ago. 

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