King Harbill and the Knights of the Raised Bed

Thanks for your suggestions regarding what we should do about our miscreant cat. We have come to the conclusion that the best way to tackle this problem is with crime prevention. This also applies to the dastardly deeds of various other garden criminals working alongside Muffin the Murderer to slowly destroy our beautiful garden.

We have therefore spent the last week recruiting our team of special garden agents and are proud to introduce:

Sergent Toad - Slug Division 
 The slugs stand no chance against his bionic tongue and if Muffin decides she wants toads legs for supper, his poisonous skin will give her a nasty shock. Toad sleeps in the wild flower section and patrols the veg bed at night.





WPC Ladybird Larvae - Aphid Prevention Squad
 With her insatiable appetite, no aphids will ever get away and if they do, her parents Lord and Ladybird will soon dispatch of them. She is most at home on the broad bean plants and amongst the roses.

Detective Inspector Max
Retired cop Max guards the borders of the garden and one well aimed bark is all it takes to send Muffin cowering back into the house and once again, peace is restored in Harbill's Garden.

NEWSFLASH: Crime Pumpkinelle

Over the last few days, we have noticed that a couple of our favourite plants are either dying or are dead.

Remember the beautiful harlequin squash in the last entry? Well here it is

Murder

Other casualties include one of our Atlantic Pumpkins whose stem has been broken

GBH

And everyday, the plot thickens when our foxglove looses some of its flowers

Theft

Photographic evidence from the crime scene

We have conducted several interviews with our garden fox, a gang of slugs and family of pigeons. We think we have, however, identified our prime suspect, who also has a very long record of previous convictions.

FEATURE: Our Blogsciples

We have been checking our statistics and are very excited to announce that our blog seems to have gone global... We have viewers from the US, Singapore, Croatia, India and even Mexico! Although it may just be one of our friends travelling for work and not having much else to do in their hotel room in the evening. We also couldn't help but notice that our viewing figures seem to be diminishing day by day, surely our garden isn't boring you?! Therefore this blog is devoted to our Followers (Blogsciples).

Firstly, thanks to Barbara for her correct identification of the Oxeye daisy - it has now come out:

Here's another one we are a bit baffled by. This was planted as a bulb and sprouted earlier than the Crocuses and has now formed this head which looks like it is about to flower but we still have no idea what it is (we threw the packet away without looking at it). Can you help?

And we would also like to feature a lovely garden from one of our loyal Blogsciples, Martin. Who says you have to have a garden to have a garden? We would like to think that this blog was his inspiration, perhaps Martin may like to start his own gardening blog?

In an attempt to get more comments, we present the picture below. Some of you may recognise the protagonist who is currently rather obsessed with his new hedge trimmer. Any caption ideas welcome.. prize will be (don't get too excited)..: the picture plus best caption featured as our 'Picture of the Week'.

FEATURE: The Fruits of Our Labour

Yes, we know you must all be asking yourselves, 'but how are the squash actually doing?' Well this entry is devoted to the swelling squash fruit, (very) slowly developing in our rather shady garden. Every morning at the crack of dawn (9am) Har (of Harbill) rushes outside, pastry brush in hand, desperate to catch any opening squash flowers.

So far, we have one sexy spaghetti squash...

Sporting a Jedwood haircut

... a delightful looking harlequin squash..

.. and what is currently known as our 'prize winning courgette' (it is one inch long).

And we have a mutant squash. Last year, we collected the seeds from one of our acorn squashes and saved them. These seeds have been planted and the plants are currently by far the most prolific in producing fruit. Yet the fruit do not look like anything we have ever seen on a squash before. We suspect that the female acorn squash was pollinated by the male from a moonbeam squash that we also grew last year. Therefore:

..may perhaps equal:

NEWSFLASH: First flowers appear in wild flower garden

Harbill have no idea what this flower is. Any suggestions gratefully received

Or this

We have not yet introduced our wild flower garden to our faithful blog followers. This is because for a while now, despite all efforts to create a small meadow, this area has resembled nothing more than a weedy patch of mud... until today. Today, two of the weeds FLOWERED!!!!!!!! A plethora of packets of wild flower seeds have been scattered across this area and it seems that they are finally coming good. The exciting bit is that we don't know what any of the flowers are.



As if this wasn't enough excitement for us, we now have a new bay tree:

And a new blueberry tree, the picture shows where the blueberries will appear. We may even get enough to put on one day's breakfast cereal (if the birds don't get to them first)..

Ignoring Monty Don's advice this week on Gardeners' World (which we watch every Friday evening without fail) not to risk planting out squash plants yet, we have planted out our squash plants. In fact, only a few remain hardening off in the cold frames. So, we now have 12 courgette plants, 3 harlequin squash, 2 turks turban, 3 spaghetti squash, 2 proper acorn squash, 2 acorn hybrids (more about this soon) and one atlantic pumpkin.

The intention is that they will climb up the trellis

But we are saving our most fascinating news for last: we are now the proud owners of a new cloche. Made by yours truly.

Please don't tell too many people or we will be inundated with orders

NEWS: Love Your Lawn Week

Last week, according to Joanna Lumley, was national "Love Your Lawn" week.

On Saturday, Harbill decided to commemorate this event by digging up more of what remains of their lawn and adding another raised bed.

You won't be surprised to hear, this bed has already been earmarked for some of the remaining 27 squash and courgette plants that have not yet been planted out.

Meanwhile, in the neighbouring bed, see how neat our lettuces are...

 

From top: radishes, garlic, little gem lettuce, and two rows of lolla rossa lettuce

We have noticed that the lolla rossa on the left are not as red as those on the right, this seems to be due to the cloche covering those on the left which has recently been bravely removed. We will report back which are tastier.

 The curcabit flowering saga continues... We now have flowers on our F1 Bohemia cucumber but it produces female only flowers. So does this mean that the flowers need help fertilising or not? Much internet-based research has been done and we have decided not, but we won't be able to keep the seeds. Any comments/suggestions gratefully received.

 

 And what could be better way to conclude a busy weekend in the garden than with a (very) large slice of Schwarzwaldkuchen?

Black Forest Gateau - made as a contribution to a Eurovision party

FEATURE: I thought I saw a puddy tat

This angelic look is most misleading

 Any one of our 4 followers who isn't interested in cats is advised to return later for the next entry because this one is all about Muffin.

Muffin has been venturing outside for four days now. So far she has: pushed a baby blackbird out of its nest, squashed the broad bean plants, trampled all over freshly planted beetroot seeds, attempted to climb the runner beans and chased all the bees away from our flowers ensuring no fertilisation occurs. Oh yes, and on day one, confirming the cliche, she climbed our tallest tree.

Unfortunately no fireman was on hand to rescue her

It is not proving easy to get Muffin back into the house, in fact, a large amount of Harbill's gardening time is currently being taken up with trying to catch Muffin (we have not yet installed a cat-flap). She is ingenious at finding new hiding places.

"These sticks and leaves shield me completely from horrid Harbill trying to make me go into boring house"

Each of these exciting days in her new adventure playground finishes in the same way. Yes, she seems to now have her own chair and woe betide any member of the Harbill household or guests who try to sit on it.