British Strawberries – Just The Best!

The British Strawberry season is upon us and yesterday we had the first batch of strawberries out of the garden. I’ve got about 20 plants in all growing, all in pots plus 4 in a hanging basket. They’re free from slugs, woodlice and other creepy crawlies that like to eat them, plus almost all are covered over to keep the birds away too, although I do have one uncovered pot which isn’t getting touched. I guess we put enough nice food out for them to not want to eat the strawberries!

My Salad garden is also bursting with seedlings. This is a metre long window box that I sowed various lines of seeds in. At the top is a mixed lettuce (most of which seems to be green and not the red variety!), then there’s rocket, a bit more lettuce and then radish at the bottom of the photo, which is going to need repotting soon. We’ve already had 6 lettuce out of the garden, all tasting so fresh and so much better than the shop bought stuff!

I’ve also bought some courgette seeds and have them in a tray in the greenhouse, although not much seems to be happening with them yet. According to the packet instructions I can plant them between April and July so hopefully they’ll catch on soon. I’ve never tried growing courgettes before but as we always have them in the fridge I figured it was worth a go.

My chilli plants are all doing well too. A couple of them are about a foot and a half high. A few little flowers have been appearing on them so hopefully we’ll start to see some fruit soon. Unfortunately they’re getting attacked by greenfly and my organic aphid and greenfly spray doesn’t seem to do much to deter them, so every morning it’s a case of check the plants over and kill off any greenfly that’s on there. The tomato plants are also growing fairly tall, the flowers are on there so again it’s a case of waiting for the fruit to appear.

Finally my Gooseberry plant is growing just a few gooseberries (about 3!). This time last year it was getting established in the garden and gave us a couple of dozen fruit, however when we had to move, I cut the bush back, uprooted it and dumped it into a pot. I’ve since replanted it into a nice large terracotta pot whilst finding the roots riddled with ants (I’d stood it on an ants nest without realising), so hopefully it’s in a better place now, and it makes a nice pot plant anyway!

So despite the unpredictable weather, the plants are still growing reasonably well. I’ll try and keep the updates a little more frequent in the future!