Kitchen Garden Notes - Coming along nicely

It's been two weeks since I gave an update on my Kitchen Garden. The mixture of rain and sun seems to have suited everything growing both inside the greenhouse and outside. The tomatoes above are the 'First in the field' variety I grew from seed. In fact the only tomatoes I have ever grown from seed. All my previous attempts have been inside in trays left on window sills which I forgot to water. We ended up with seven strong plants. Three have gone in a grow bag in the greenhouse, one went to Mum and Dad last week (along with a tray of wild rocket), one is in a black bucket and the other two in this old plastic box. We've got to that stage where the greenhouse is full that other locations are being sought.

The beetroot has made a very good recovery after the cat attack of a couple of weeks ago. As I lost a couple of plants I sowed a few more to fill in the gaps. These have all germinated and looking strong.

The second sowing of carrots have also germinated. They are a different variety to the first batch. I haven't grown carrots before so I'm interested in which variety does better. The original sowing now has a very distinctive carrot leaf to them.

It seems that the three courgette plants are getting visibly bigger by the day. The good news is it's not all prickly leaf. All three plants have a nice selection of flower buds on them so hopefully I should see tiny courgettes developing soon.

Find of the week is the rhubarb. I seriously thought about digging it up a couple of months ago as it had only produced a couple of very thin, week stems. The leaves had also proved popular with the local slug population. The variety is Timperley Early and really it should have been ready to eat in April and May. I know I was baking cakes with it last May. After we went to the rhubarb weekend at Clumber Park I mentioned to one of the gardeners there that my rhubarb had failed this year. She told me it had been a bad year for rhubarb as it had been a very mild winter with only a couple of hard frosts. Last year we had snow every week until April but had a good yield of rhubarb. Patience has preserved and whilst hiding in the strawberry patch it has had a revival.

My only real concern at the moment are the French beans. We have been planting French beans for years and getting excellent yields. We've done nothing special but simply put beans in pots, let them germinate and then stick in some bamboo canes to let them climb up. Last year they grew and grew but not a single flower appeared and therefore no beans. We've planted two varieties this year and so far no flowers. I'm not sure if these little buds are flower buds or yet more leaf buds. Whatever they are I feel a bit cheated. These are the speedy variety which promised beans in 7-8 weeks from planting. I sowed them on 11^th May and I can't see I'm going to have beans in less than two weeks.

This week's proof there are flowers in the garden is the multi-coloured hydrangea. It was already here when we moved in 12 years. Over the years it has grown and grown but I've never seen such a range or depth of colour to it.

Finally for this week is the greedy bird of the week. There's been several fledglings in the garden with blackbirds and starlings helping themselves to meal worms and the fat balls. None have been so cute as this little sparrow. It has been doing some major wing fluttering exercise on top of the feeder. Another favourite pastime is to sit on the tray at the bottom of the seed feeder and have a swing about. When you're hungry though the best thing to do is to sit on top on the feed station, call out noisily for mum and wait for her to turn up to feed you.