May always sees a flurry of activity, with one eye on the often-unpredictable weather, as carefully nurtured greenhouse seedlings start getting hardened off in cold frames and then planted out in freshly prepared veg beds.
With the early, and always beautiful, Calla Lilies blooming, we started the month, as is traditional, getting in this year’s dubious potatoes in, and not forgetting to keep a record of which varieties are where!
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Sounding a bit like a prog rock concept album’s track listings, The Portents of Spring, has surely been followed by The Arrival of Spring.
The asparagus bed has duly started sprouting, making a delicious addition in the kitchen to the already prolific wild garlic and rhubarb.
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It’s shaping up to have been a pretty good year at The Secret Acre, despite the very dry weather.
Where crops simply failed in last year’s unseasonable rain, at least the gardener has the chance to water things, especially, if like us, you live in a well-managed area like Severn Tent Water, which rarely needs a hosepipe ban.
So most things are back to growing reasonably well, even if the fruits are a bit undersized from the lack of rain.
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There is usually something to surprise you in the garden at The Secret Acre.
Earlier this year, Emma was joined by a very curious pheasant in the Greenhouse.
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Readers here in the UK will know that, after the wettest winter/spring on record and stubbornly cold temperatures, finally as we reach mid-summer, we might finally be getting some summer weather.
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It’s been a difficult year for plants and wildlife suffering the stuck weather systems of climate change. A worry for the extremes to come.
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And we say, it’s all right.
Despite the Climate Change driven drought, summer abundance arrived at The Secret Acre.
It all made for a busy July and August, along with the usual influx of willing helpers at the start of the school holidays.
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Here’s a quick pictorial catch up of how it’s going on The Secret Acre Veg Patch after our unexpected slow start to the year.
Overall, things have caught up pretty well considering our chaotic spring, and garlic, field beans, salads, strawberries and red currents are all ready to start to harvest.
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Despite our usual New Year optimism for the gardening year ahead, an unexpected combination of care duties, hospital treatment and Covid, meant that we are having a very slow start to our spring at The Secret Acre.
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As the September harvest with its late summer sunshine gave away to increasingly damp and cool autumnal weather, we gathered in the last of the crops at The Secret Acre and started clearing down the veg beds.
Here are a few pictures from October and early November’s gradual decent into autumn.
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The Secret Acre 