Good things in the garden

There are all sorts of good things in the garden at the moment.  Looking among the foliage I found this pumpkin starting up.

 
While in among another bunch of leaves I found this cucumber that will be a nice addition to salads next week.

 
The fruit is doing well again this year (although we won't talk about the disaster that was the apricot crop) and the pear tree will need to be supported soon for this weight of good things.

 
But this fig has my name on it for this weekend - it looks wonderful!

 
Peach leaf curl can be a real problem, but an old "astuce" over here is to hang egg shells in your peach and nectarine trees to reduce its worst effects.  There has been so little rain this year, I can't really comment, but anything is worth a try as chemical remedies are withdrawn and not really advisable if you have roaming chickens.

 
And finally - compare these two pots with chilli plants in.  All plants come from the same batch bought for me last week by John when Pepper the chicken went on a destructive rampage in the well protected pepper and chilli bed (now even better protected).  The ones on the left were potted on to the big pot on Thursday last week, the ones on the right were potted on today and are the colour the whole batch were on purchase.  It goes to show that some good quality compost can turn round a weedy looking performer!

 

Comments

[Gardening News]

You have varieties of fruits and vegetables in your garden.For growing chillies,you need soil rich in organic material with good compost.What extra care you are taking for chilli?

[Jane]

While the comment above could well be blog spam, I will do them the courtesy of responding, as it is a jolly good question.

Each of the raised beds gets topped up each year with "terreau universale" which is broadly the French equivalent of a grow bag if the level has sunk signficantly, but also 40 litres of "enrichisol", an organic soil enricher and conditioner, produced by Compost de Baugeois (www.baugeoiscompost49.com)from all the green waste that is produced in the canton of Bauge. This provides extra organic matter and nutrients. Later in the season, I use Tomatorite liquid feed on a weekly basis on the pepper and aubergine bed, the cucubit bed and the tomato bed. We are very pleased with the results.

The 5 chilli plants that are in pots are in our own home made compost, which is a rotted down mix of household organic waste (organic in its true sense, not trendy sense), garden waste and the waste from the chickens and their run. This year it was boosted with 6 year old rotting quince, which needed the chicken manure to really activate the composting process, but once it got going, produced some wonderful soil. This gets seived to remove stones, nuts, slugs and chafer grubs - the last two items going back to the chickens for more "work". The chickens love compost seiving time!

[Green Mountain National]

Eating pear is so delicious. I really love this fruit.

[Recycling organic waste]

I like to eat the fruit and i think you share a real rural life.