Our Polytunnel and Garden in July

July is nearly over but I still want to write an update on our garden and polytunnel, the way it looks right now.

Here are the last few months:

I’m so glad I called my Blog “the Wild Cherry Farm” because it is very wild indeed these days.

Between going on Campervan trips and neglecting the weeding, chickens breaking out to take dust baths in our polytunnel and caterpillars eating my Kale and Broccoli, it’s all quite a big mess.

But we are still eating plenty of fresh homegrown food every day and I’m glad we have this messy imperfect garden to spend time in.

In the Polytunnel

Here you can see an example of two garden intruders. Our rooster Pompus Pomponello likes to bring his girls for a relaxing dust bath in the dry soil of our Polytunnel while snacking on various salads and herbs.

The other villain is Pieris rapae, a white butterfly laying his eggs in all our cruciferous vegetables (kale, broccoli, cauliflower) and the caterpillars love feasting on the green leaves, often nibbling them down to mere skeletons.

Ah well, I suppose it’s nice to see that our garden provides a pleasant place for so many creatures…

These are the tiny Cucamelons I grew for the first time. Tiny cucumbers that look like mini melons.

I think I prefer bigger cucumbers but the kids love them.

I’ve quite a runner bean jungle growing here at the moment. We pick beans as we need them, for example for a delicious summer vegetable soup (recipe follows soon).

Yellow cherry tomatoes and kale. Kohlrabi and beetroot in the background.

This is a green Hokkaido which I have never grown before. I think we can actually harvest the first one very soon.

The Outside Garden

An overgrown pond.

And lots of summer flowers for the bees and butterflies.

Snow Peas, Rainbow Chard, Beetroot, Lettuce and Broccoli. There are also two courgette plants but not in the picture.

In the Orchard

Some day I have to learn more about fruit trees because we haven’t been getting many apples over the last few years. Last year we had ONE apple. My son was so happy that he stroked and caressed the apple until it fell off before it was ripe.

This year we have TWO apples on our apple tree. Hurray!

I just hope they’ll survive my children’s affection.

We also didn’t get many currants and blueberries over the last few years because all the birds got them first. This year M built a cage for the blueberries. It might seem a bit over the top but it has been well worth it so far.

My favourite thing at the moment is to walk barefoot through the orchard and pick fresh blueberries for my breakfast.

And before I go, here is a picture of our mother hen with five chicks walking through the garden.

Three of these chicks had a rough time because they lost their mother to the fox, but thankfully the other mother hen (who had two chicks) adopted the orphans almost immediately.