The Mock Turtle

There’s red cabbage and cavolo nero under the green nets, courgette, leeks, beetroot, rainbow chard and spinach under the yellow net.

A leaves section - salad mustard, lettuce and rocket (and Barry the Spider’s Resting Place ).

French beans, peas and borlotti beans.

There’s also some tomatoes and cucumber in the ‘greenhouse’.

Loads of good stuff.

Gorgeous Smal, so pretty and colourful.

That's an exciting delivery, Wendy!

I've got rosemary beetles! Not had them before and I've been picking the pretty stripy buggers off as they had better not go on my new, young sage.

Happy growing, Wendy! I find growing vegetables so satisfying. I’m a bit crap at flowers though. Smal, yours looks glorious! I’d be so delighted with that.

Our vegetables seem to be coming on really well this year, much earlier than usual. Some lettuce and a couple of courgettes are very nearly ready to eat, which is surprising as we’re so far north. I think it might be partly the lovely weather and partly that we’re at home more to properly look after them.

Aha. The problem was the upload thingy.

Behold my resurrected Peony tree.

FFS, it's sideways. It's not sideways in real life.

definitely alive!

You have no idea of how pleased I am about that.

Well done for rescuing it!

My tree peony is definitely taking the mick now . I pruned it to the ground in December!

Oh wow, Mayday. Mine is like the grumpy little sister version.

Mayday, your peony!

It’s definitely too hot for some of the tomatoes. Think I’m going to keep protecting them until Wednesday when it’s due to be cooler and then leave them to it.

Somehow I have ended up tackling the compost bin today! We’ve been here four years almost and I’ve looked in it a few times and changed my mind. I think I’ve posted about it before too.

Anyway, contents seem very dry, it’s definitely not doing anything because it’s not creating heat (if I’ve read correctly) and there seemed to a load of soil dumped on the top. I have dug out the whole fecking bin to loosen everything up and create some air. I think I’m going to have a go and revitalising it but have never had a compost heap/bin before. Any tips?

Oh, I just found a whole thread that I started two years ago!

Have you been putting stuff in it? It does look very dry. Could the matted stuff be grass clippings?

No, I’ve left it completely.

I’ve run out of containers to put it in!

And this is what the stuff in it looks like now I’ve bashed it about. Looks useable, I think. Quite dry but not completely.

I reckon it's gone dry because you're not putting stuff in it, I'd probably just stick a bit of that back in and then start using it. I'm not an expert, mind, but I stick stuff in all year and then empty it once a year and it works well enough

Yes, I think I’ll gradually re-layer it, bash it up and chuck a few worms in. If I can moisten (sorry!) it up a bit, it’ll be grand.

A bit of water to remoisten it and it should be grand if you start adding to it again.

I made this today but my husband thinks it's a bit stupid :woteva:

I think it looks fine, Small.