Guinness IS good for you

Rather reluctantly, but fortunately very briefly, we have a quick update on our tomatoes. We now have two. Huge thanks for this has to go to the local GIY group, who had a plant swap. We managed to get ri... oops, sorry, we mean "reluctantly part with" some rather fine, rooted cuttings from our Gooseberry bush that, tragically, got themselves cut off when it was moved last month. In return, we scooped half-a-dozen seed potatoes (although we've forgotten if they were Roosters or Records) and a Tigerella tomato seedling. Added to our remaining Gardener's Delight, we might yet get the tomatoes to raise and dash our hopes again before the end of the year.

Gardeners Delight (top) and Tigerella (bottom) Tomatoes
(with several departed in the background)

We've found that living a Good Life is very much swings and roundabouts, checks and balances. Something goes up, another comes down. We had hoped to report on the salad bed that we've now sown with the first round of seed of the year. Last year this was one of the top performers in the garden. Things had started well this year - the Rocket had germinated after a few days and all was good. Then disaster! All but one of the Rocket seedlings disappeared and, day after day, nothing else appeared. The reason? Slugs. Adjective adjective Slugs! Unfortunately, we had forgotten to deploy our beer traps, which we normally bait with good old Irish Porter. On discovering our problem, we rushed to the drinks cabinet only to discover no stout. So we did the best we could with what we had. Unfortunately, we are sorry to report that pear cider does not work in Slug beer traps (which is a pity since this would be a good way of getting rid of the awful stuff). Of course, on the plus side it does mean that we're now forced to re-stock the drinks cabinet. See? Ups and downs; swings and roundabouts!

Salad bed with row of Rocket seedlings
(and, hilariously, the forgotten beer traps (green) along the back)

Steamed tomatoes and soft fruit

We have some good news and bad news. The bad news is that our onion seedlings seem determined to follow the tomato seedlings to the great compost heap in the sky (or, at least, in the yard). The good news is that we've doscovered the problem. In our efforts to protect and nurture our seedlings, we put them inside a walk-in greenhouse inside another walk-in greenhouse. We thought it'd be cosy. It was. Very cosy. So cosy, in fact, that the water in the trays underneath the pots was scalding hot. We managed, very slowly, to cook our seedlings to death. Ironic really that despite having some great plants, none of last year's tomatoes made it to being cooked (the one tomato that did grew got eaten raw, and then largely spat out). Although they got cooked this year, it is very much a case of one step forward, two steps back with our tomatoes. Thank goodness we failed early enough this year that we still have time to sow some more.

Soft fruit bushes at end of plot
(Gooseberry is closest, things are a bit hazy further away...)

On perhaps more poitive news, we finally managed to get some soft fruit transplanted. A gooseberry, two Blackcurrants and one Redcurrant (or, possibly, one Blackcurrant and two Redcurrants) made the trip to the new veg plot. These were pruned quite heavily and rather indiscriminantly (in the case of the Gooseberry, it was literally shoved in the car and any bits sticking out cut off so that the boot would close!), so we're not hoping for too much from them this year, but it is good to have some in place at last.

The Veg Plot Plan
(green is done; the future is blue)

When deciding where we were going to put the fruit bushes, we worked up a plan for the whole veg plot. To be honest, plan is probably a bit optimistic here, since that sounds like we know what we're doing. Perhaps "vision" would be more appropriate (that's the kind of things companies normally put together at great expense to make it look like they know what's going on, usually about six months before the liquidators are called in, typically due to the company wasting all its cash on these sorts of things, rather than focusing on being profitable, but I digress). It will be interesting to see how things change over the coming years as we come up with new ideas or fail at ones we've already had. It will probably be more interesting to see how long we actually take to complete the plot - as things stand now, we'd sell small parts of our anatomy for a 2015 finish date.