Never mind Ascot or Wimbledon, we have strawberries galore!
My favourite way to eat them is of course straight off the plant. However, I also love strawberry sandwiches. It has to be on plain white bread - I use the traditional French baguette. Squiggle down the strawberry and eat. Somehow the flavor blends into the bread and explodes in the mouth. You don't believe me? Well, try it for yourself.
This is the spring harvest from the oil seed rape. Despite the top picture it is in fact all the same colour. Over time it will change its texture and harden. Taste? Delicious!
One hive gave us a total of 13 kilos. Not one for the record books but given the weather, not too bad.
Our gite is now open for business. These are the photos I took of the garden last week to help promote it.
The greenhouse is being productive. After last year's tomato disaster I decided to keep two tomatoes growing under cover. The rest are in the veggie patch. The lettuces will be reay next week.
Celery to keep Max happy.
Last year a friend told me that you can keep weeds down by mulching with (untreated) grass cuttings so this year we decided to try it. I have them around the toms and lettuces in the greenhouse and around everything in the veggie patch that doesn't have a plastic mulch.
I DON'T like weeding!
This is what happens when you leave a rake the wrong way around and the stand on it. Hurts like mad but I put some arnica oil on it so I hope it goes down quickly.
After the appalling weather this year we finally had the opportunity to open up the hives this afternoon.
We finished 2012 with three full size hives and two nucs. I have been concerned about all of them but with freezing weather turning to monsoon and back to freezing it has been impossible to do anything.
So it wasn't without a certain amount of trepidation that we approached the first of the three big hives. This is the colony that we took from a tree last year where it was upsetting a farmer - he was being attacked every time he drove past in his tractor! To our delight it was full of brood and had a small amount of honey. We put on a super and moved on.
Elsewhere there was good news and bad news. The good was that each and every hive/nuc had brood and looked healthy. However, they all had a minimum amount of honey stored so we put the feeders on and will give them a syrup feed tomorrow morning. Will they survive? I hope so. The oil seed rape is just coming into flower around is so if the rain holds off a bit they will have plenty of food.
Fingers crossed!
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