Getting green-fingered this week

Starting out slowly but surely.

Yesterday (sunday) I had my weekly stall at Jarnages market (23140) and I was placed next to a local fruit and vegetable producer.

Recently we had been discussing at home which fruit and vegetables we should be growing, and having had success in the past with tomatoes and cucumbers we decided we should start there first.

So I purchased two cucumber plants and one tomato plant from my market neighbour, for the sum of 1€ each plant, and with cucumbers costing up to 1,30€ each in the supermarkets these days and decent flavourful tomatoes being quite costly per kilo, fingers crossed our endeavours will not only be a great learning experience for the children but also eventually reduce our weekly shopping bill too.

Re-potting and labelling.

Sunday afternoon (between rain showers) was spent re-potting the new specimens in bigger plant pots, a temporary home until we have prepared the garden for a more permanant vegetable patch.

The tomato plant was looking a bit droopy and thirsty, but seems to have perked up nicely in it’s new home this morning.

I also got to test one of my new pyrography projects which may become a product on the site if they prove to be durable over the summer, my plant labels.

Brightening up the atelier/workshop.

Our strawberry plants have been living in grow bags for a few years, and we decided it was time to give them a new improved home. But it needed to be where the children can get involved and also out of reach of pests like slugs and snails.

So my husband came up with the idea of hanging them from the workshop wall, the site is ideal as it has plenty of sunlight to ripen the fruits and it also brightens up the workshop wall.

But that’s not the end…

Once the strawberries have finished fruiting they will need to be divided next spring, and the runners they are currently producing can also be removed to create more plants, so it’s lucky we have plenty of wall space for more strawberry containers.

Other jobs to do.

The lawn constantly needs mowing at this time of year, especially as we have had some good rainfall. In the past droughts have caused our grassy garden to become parched and the grass all but died off in some parts. Once a week I plan to be out cutting the grass, probably accompanied by our machinery obsessed three year old, who likes to collect the grass clippings in his tractor & trailer and deposit them on the compost heap for me.

The redcurrant shrubs, of which we now only have two, are full of fruit which I usually do not have time to use and rather than have the crop go waste, we harvest them and leave them on the windowsill for passing locals to take for free. Sometimes we receive anonymous jars of redcurrant conserve in return which are delicious. We also leave some for the local bird population too despite the mess they leave behind afterwards! ahem, but we won’t go into that 😉

That’s all the news from the garden so far this week, I have some new “babies” to look after for now and will probably buy some more tomatoes next weekend, and the blueberries look like they might just produce some fruit this year, so no doubt I’ll be blogging about that in the weeks to come.

à bientôt

Natalie