Another hot day, but it will be cooler tomorrow, so some planned jobs were postponed. I managed to do a mow on 1 pretty easily. Only the path between beds 1 and 4 needed a lot of work to get down through the thatch.

The pond was a bit low, so I added some water. We should also get rain on Monday night.

I raked up some weeds from around the tomatoes. The other half of the bed is being left to all the volunteer poppies and corn marigolds it has coming up. The poorly aquilegia looked worse at first glance, but it has new growth coming up, which is great.

Next to no veg is coming up yet, I guess because it’s now so dry. It probably has time to catch up, but it’s a very weird year. A couple of sunflowers have died and I think a couple of the scant parsnips are gone too. But the sown and volunteer nasturtiums are now taking off. I sowed some cornflower in hole in the bed by the shed.

Sitting in the shed I can see the poppies and lupins and geums flowering and somehow I’m not really appreciating them and the fact that they’re blooming. I’m just walking past them knackered all the time.

Today was another hot day, so I just went down to the plot in the morning. I weeded all the poppies and weeds from around the parsnips and discovered that I’ve got enough for this year. The two wide dense rows from last year show that they were too much.

I planted snapdragons in Bed 1 and the right border. On arrival I discovered that one was missing from the pack having been stolen by a bird. It was found at home and shoved in a pot.

I sat by the pond for a little while and saw this year’s first big beetle and my first ever caddisfly, which has wrapped itself in hornwort leaves. There was also a tiny damselfly larvae, so damselflies must love my pond.

I had five silly sunflowers from home, so I’ve put those in the right bed, the nasturtium bed, and the space where I’d taken parsnips from. I think at this point, the remaining parsnips can just stay where they are and flower. I’ll have to get them out at some point though, because clearly frost doesn’t kill them.

We’ve got a few days of high temperatures, so I did some potting on at home in the shade in the morning. The four remaining sweetcorn have been moved into bigger pots. The zinnias have all been moved on to bigger pots too. The rudbeckia are tiny, and while the marigolds are comparatively big, they’re not worth moving.

Later, I made a post-dinner visit to the plot to do the strimming. It wasn’t too overgrown, thanks to Mum’s mower reaching further, so it didn’t take forever. The ground is so uneven now and I can’t get the gate all the way open because it catches on a lump in the ground. That needs solving and I’d love to get the ground levelled better on a wider scale. 

The potatoes are up now and looking good. Maybe I’ll do them again, depending on how easy they are to dig up. Covering them with straw is certainly much easier than earthing up. 

Something had been digging around in the plot – in the fern bed, at some of the straw, one of the tomatoes and, of course, knocking everything around under the bird feeder. I knocked the old bug hotel apart and threw the big bits under the tree onto the brush pile.

I removed the parsnips cover and found that there are a few up. Last year’s are almost flowering and at this point, I think I’ll just leave them and not worry about digging them out for food. 

A teasel has suddenly sprung up almost out of nowhere. I guess I knew there was a rosette there, but suddenly the plant is huge. 

I watered a few things, including the aquilegia, which isn’t looking very happy. It has some mildew, but possibly I’ll be able to feed it and give it some more strength. 

Beans are finally popping up at home, so we put the wigwam up in Bed 9. I added two smaller wigwams for sweet peas in the afternoon. I added a couple of circles of strings for support and planted the shop-bought sweet peas. If the ones at home come to anything, they can be crammed in. I put a couple of shop ones at the back of the left border, but gave them no great support, so they’ll probably just flop and be forgotten. I’ve put down a few slug pellets to protect the peas.

I’ve put the Roma tomatoes in Bed 10 and they’re accompanied by little marigolds too.

Mum did a big mow with her mower, which finally brought the grass down. I then went round with my mower on 1, so finally the grass is a bit better.

I’ve noticed a bear’s breeches coming up by the right-hand tangerine geum. Finally, it’s come back!

I’ve put aside smaller sticks for a cucumber wigwam, but at this point Bed 6 is full of garlic, candytuft and poppies, so I’m not sure that’ll happen. This year is all a bit of a mess. I have managed to put supports up for the everlasting peas though.

I planted out all 6 Tom Tumbler cherry tomatoes in Bed 1 today and put marigolds around them. Happily, some cells had more than one plant, which meant I could complete the pattern.

There are now little hills in the straw as the potatoes are starting to emerge. There’s been a frost down at the plot – leaves on the tree and on the lemon balm have been nipped – but my potatoes were safe under the straw, so that’s another bonus.

I dug up some more parsnips and the last two took half an hour to extricate. They tie into the clay below and put up such a fight. I found an earthworm tied into a knot on my way down.

I listened for birds and found that the chiffchaff had come back. I also gained my first blackcap and another spotted flycatcher. The bird of the day was the jackdaw, but it waited until I wasn’t recording, cawed loudly above me, and wasn’t to be heard again.    

I have sweet peas finally coming up from my second sowing, but bizarrely, I still haven’t managed to grow runner beans. The weather keeps being a bit cold, but this is just bizarre. I hope the seeds haven’t rotted again. I’ll sow them direct before long.

I opened Beds 1, 9 and 10 today. There were lots of ants under 1 and 9, but no birds to be seen all the time I was there. A couple of beds also had grass vole nests under the plastic and those beds really smelled of wee when opened up.

I’ve had to give up on my seedlings at home; they’ve just not growing as they should. It seems like there’s no nutrition in the compost to speak of. I need to address that somehow next year. In the meantime, I’ve bought:

• 6 x Tumbling Tom Red cherry tomatoes
• 5 x Roma plum tomatoes
• 1 x Tumbler cherry tomato for home
• 12 x French marigolds
• Tray of small antirrhinums
• Small pot of sweet peas
• Standard fuchsia

Part of the plan is to put wildflower seed down in the non-potato end of Bed 7, but I keep forgetting that I’ve still got lots of parsnips there – one of which is about to flower. I also had to cut the scapes off most of my garlic plants. They’ve got a bit of rust, but aren’t dying back yet. There’s lots of self-sown candytuft around them.

I sowed the second rows of beetroot and carrot in Bed 4, and sowed 2 x 2 sweetcorn seeds in Bed 11. I have 4 possible sweetcorn seedlings at home that will survive. Not that I’ve hardened them off at all.

I weeded the two onion beds. I realised I didn’t have a plan for what will go in the beds after them, so I’ll either use them as nursery beds for the house, or do green manure again. I finally planted the 2 perennials for the house in Bed 1 to keep them safe: a small aquiliegia and a small burnet, which shouldn’t need staking.

At least one of my lupins is smothered in whitefly. I’ve been rubbing them off the plant carefully, and I also saw a couple of ladybirds, which are the best defence. 

Merlin picked up a new bird twice: the common whitethroat, and I saw this year’s first small diving beetles in the bird bowl today. It was good to see them at last, because I imagine the damselfly larvae have probably eaten all the other ones. The perennial candytuft  on the bank has definitely died, so I should see if I can get some seeds – maybe morning glory.

At home I checked on my ridiculously unsuccessful seeds and found that all my runner beans had rotted in the compost; some of them had put down a tap root beforehand. There was no sign of sweet peas except for the odd bit of root. I redid all the beans and sowed the few sweet peas I had left. When I got to the plot I (eventually) discovered that one of the big poles had fallen down, so no netting this year. If the beans ever grow, I’ll do wigwams – and I can probably get nasturtiums to go up wigwams too.

There was some good rain last night, which was good for the plot. I saw a female great spotted woodpecker on the elder, which was there for just a moment. I could so easily have missed it.

I need to open up Bed 1 to put my perennials in place for safekeeping, but first of all there was tidying to be done. I sorted through all the logs and branches I’ve been storing. I cut the elder whips down to useful sizes and put the logs neatly under the apple tree. The smaller useful branches have been arranged under the bird feeder for some interest and protection. There are small bears breeches nearby that don’t seem to ever get going. 

I did all the strimming this morning, and then had to run home to pay the reservation fee on the house! Magically, the fork I left on  the plastic overnight wasn’t stolen by a crow.

In the afternoon I did a mow on 2 and tried to go on 1 too. I managed the main and back paths, but it kept stopping, so I just need to get the big mower on it, otherwise I’m never going to win.

I saw the robins feeding their baby on the fence. The baby also tried out the traditional perch of my open shed door.Since putting the bamboo back in the bee hotel lots of holes have filled up.

Some new bulbs have appeared in Bed 3. I think that they’re the little gladioli. So I’ve got some good successional colour in that bed.

The fern bed is looking good. I hope to recreate a bit of this in the new garden.

The alliums have turned out to be pretty stout and stable. One in the ledge had fallen over, but that’s because the bulb was trying to escape, so I buried it in compost.

I did a mow on 2 this morning, pretty easily. Next job will be strimming the long edges and seeing if I can catch it fast enough to do a mow on 1 if at all possible.

JG had some seed potatoes out for anyone to take, so I picked up 6 Cara as they looked nice and healthy. They’re a late main crop and floury, the same as King Edwards.

With only 6 sweetcorn seedlings at home, I had room for 2 King Edwards from home in Bed 11. I dug out a row of parsnips from Bed 7 (some small, some big) and that made room for the 6 Cara. I buried the potatoes about a trowel’s depth down, covered them and then added a thick layer of straw on top and watered it down. It’s a hybrid of ordinary planting and the no dig method, so we’ll see how it goes.

Flowers are meant to go in the other half of Bed 7, so more parsnips will have to come up in a while. A bunch of poppy seedlings are growing among them, so I’ll try and keep those.

The first carrot and beetroot are up, so something’s going as it should. At home, none of the sweet peas or runner beans have come up and survived, which is insane.

A great tit was busy on the feeder at one point, making a hell of a mess, chucking out lots of seed. At least I know that the ground feeders will clear it up when I’m not around.

The bee hotel has been very busy with bees flying around it, but not taking much action. I put back the dowels that I’d saved from the woodpecker’s attack, which filled it up much better.

I finally rescued the little fuchsia and put it in a pot to take home. Slugs had been over meanwhile though, so now it has no leaves again.