The weeds have grown incredibly quickly in the vegetable beds, and I am beginning to remember why in past years my good intentions to grow my own have come unstuck by about the end of May. The broad beans look OK, rising above the sea of fat hen, but when I delved down among the bitter cress, baby nettles, grass, goosegrass, and shepherds purse to look to see if any peas had germinated, it seemed as though they might have but something had eaten them.
The seedling leeks are very thin, and I think I should have fertilised the bed at the outset instead of relying on the dressing of home made compost. There are some parsnips in among the weeds, but whether they will ever come to anything is debatable. I didn't have time to look for the beetroot.
The asparagus bed which did not receive a layer of compost definitely needs some blood, fish and bone and some mushroom compost, as even the weeds were on the skinny side, and the asparagus plants are infuriatingly not as good as the self sown one that has plonked itself in the gravel by the formal pond, despite the fact that the latter is growing in almost totally unimproved soil. The asparagus roots I planted a couple of years ago are barely alive, but a few very thin and frail stems tell me that they are just clinging to life. The centre of the bed has been infiltrated by a weed grass with a running habit, and as I began to tease grass roots out from the asparagus crowns I reflected that it was going to be a slow process cleaning the bed up. There's a lot of red leaved oxalis as well, an almost ineradicable weed that was already in the sole border when we moved here, and has since set up outposts throughout the garden in spite of my best efforts.
I planted out my pot raised sweetcorn, dwarf French beans, courgettes and cucumbers. The beans were starting to look slightly yellow from sitting in their pots, though I've seen worse offered for sale, and the other plants actually looked quite decent, though the wind may have given them a battering by now. Everything needs watering.
My best approach is probably to view 2015 as a year of preparation. None of the current crop of weeds have set seed yet. If I can clear them, and keep the beds roughly hoed, that will be the first step to getting the soil into a better state. I have got rid of most of the perennial weeds, apart from some obstinate bramble roots. The beds need manure in the autumn, to put more body into the soil since the home made compost was clearly not sufficient, and lime at some stage. Then I could draw up a proper planting plan over the winter, and go into spring with the ground ready to use, give or take the odd weed, whereas at the start of this year the whole patch was a mess of weeds, including brambles, docks and perennial grasses. If I could rid the greenhouse of root aphid I could start more vegetables in modules, which is how I've done leeks and beet in the past.
This plan does contain quite a few Ifs. If I can make time to keep up with the weeding all summer. If I manage to get round to making that many extra trips for manure. If I can eliminate the root aphid. The idea of home grown vegetables is delightful. It's just unfortunate that I can go and buy leeks in a supermarket quite easily, while the amount we'd have to pay a gardener for even one day's work keeping the lawn edges tidy would keep us in leeks for several months. Not that I would ever want to hire a gardener even if I could afford one. It would no longer be entirely my garden.
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