Our First Veg: Radishes are the New Rock n Roll

Here's our first crop from our new raised vegetable bed.

Some very tasty radishes, picked to thin-out the radishes left. The warm weather and occasional rain has meant the remaining veg have shot up very quickly. Given this is our first semi-serious attempt at 'dig for victory' style gardening for circa 5 years or so, it's a success so far. Admittedly it's early days: but the signs, like the patients in an AIDS ward, are all positive so far.

We've started a new plot for our runner beans too, and instead of long rows of beans using bamboo, I have opted for using branches cut from our own trees (saved from a recent pruning session and stripped of minor branches and foliage) to make an organic looking 'wig wam' of wood, which I'm hoping all the plants will grow up to a central point.

Using some branches with slight bends and even some that split into two half way up give the edifice itself a much more natural look, and I can't wait to see the plants in full productive flow. I get almost as much pleasure from the flowers the plants bring forth as the crop eventually produced.

I even put some old uneaten potatoes in the compost heap and they have burst forth, so I am hoping they have seeded and our compost heap will have its own crop of spuds. being next to the chickens we can fork the waste, including chicken poop, uneaten scraps from the dinner table, and the various cuttings etc. the chickens have had a chance to pick through, tear up and generally break apart directly onto the compost heap with its potato plants (already about 30 - 45cm high, that's one to one and a half feet in old money).

So here's hoping for a good Summer and a bumper crop in our burgeoning vegetable garden!

Oh, it seems that tadpoles like fish food as much as the goldfish too. I guess there's no accounting for taste.