It's a Bit of a Squash in These Tights

Billy would like to point out that these tights do not come from his wardrobe

Well, actually, it's a whole squash. This may not be the most aesthetic way of gardening but it sure is a good way to prevent the swelling squash from breaking the vines and falling to their death.

 And these squash need some help. Up until about three weeks ago, every single squash on our spaghetti squash plants grew up to the size of a thumb, promptly rotted, and fell off. You can imagine how devastating this has been for us (hence no blogs for a while - too depressing).





Much internet research has taken place and we think that we may have found the solution: When the female squash flower closes up again and begins to go brown, a bit like this:

... we manually remove the flowers. What seems to have been happening is that the flower has been rotting, and the rot subsequently spreading to the squash.

Now that our squash are finally beginning to actually grow, they need constant surveillance. As you may recall Muffin is currently doing her community service and we felt guarding the squash bed a suitable punishment to fit her crimes.

Harbill Blog Hacking Scandal

It has been brought to our attention that our gardening blog may have been hacked. See the title of our previous post, published six days before the Telegraph this Saturday:

We will be calling for the resignation of the Gardening Editor.

As if this news wasn't bad enough, it rained all weekend, gardening was postponed and we had to make do with Harry Potter.

Evanesco Rain!!! Ohhhh, it didn't work.

So instead, we'd like to show some photos from our blogsciples' French gardens, thanks to Barbara and to Jane & Conrad.

Barbara & Jim's wild flower garden - where is it Barbara? Billy can't remember.

Grapes = wine (yum) - from Jane & Conrad's garden near Bergerac

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Has someone cast the Avifors spell on Jane & Conrad?

Don't be surprised if you see these photographs in the papers next weekend. Harbill don't just break the news, we make the news...

The Butterfly Effect

Whilst in Italy we saw a plethora of butterflies and moths, including a Scarce Swallowtail and our new favourite moth, a Nine-Spotted Tiger Moth:

This inspired us to keep up our efforts with our burgeoning wild flower garden, hopefully enticing in more than just midges and the odd cabbage white.

It has come on leaps and bounds since its inception as a square of mud:

Before

And look at it now!

 

We have even found a caterpillar, could this be our first Swallowtail???

Let it Grow, Let it Grow, Let it Grow

After a week's respite in Italy (more about this in the next blog) from the stress of running a veg garden, we returned to a veritable feast.

Last night's supper consisted of: nasturtium, broad bean and courgette risotto with lettuce and cucumber salad. Tonight's supper also consisted of a salad of lettuce, cucumber and nasturtiums. We are currently enjoying these homegrown suppers; we may not be in a month's time. Does anyone know how to preserve lettuce?

On the right is one of our three lettuce patches

We are so excited about our wild garden, which has been created to entice in the insects and general wildlife, and will therefore be devoting our next blog entry to it. Here is a taster:

Today our blog is 2 months old. Let's see how much has changed in our garden in two months...

Where's Muffin?