May's plotty goings on!

Hello everyone! As the last few months have flown by, I haven't had a second to write my monthly blog, so here's the first of three updates on the same day!

I could have just skipped May and June, but more as reflective practice for myself, I thought I would account for them here too. If you happen to enjoy the updates, you are welcome to join me as I re-visit these months :)

Word of warning, the last three months have been challenging but I will try to balance this out with all the lovely, positive things too :)

So here we are! As I write this, we are in the height of Summer on 31st July, and this week has felt nothing short of full-on Autumn, and ironically the month I am currently looking back on, May, felt positively balmy for a lot of it (if my memory serves me well)!

May did not bring flowers in abundance, as I only have a small garden where my established roses and perennials reside, and the cut flower plot did not exist!

The promise of flowers, however; was very much apparent. Some days, I would even say it was screaming, as I was (due to the small matter of still needing to build a plot!) late to planting out my seedlings, of which there were many.

May was a month of hard toil, and the photos I took were mainly soil/ compost based, something I find very interesting, but maybe not everyone would share this enthusiasm :D

I am not one to shy away from hard graft, I quite like it truth be told, which is a good thing as there was plenty to get on with!

May was the month I shifted tonnes and tonnes of bark chip and compost with my trusty spade/ fork and wheelbarrow (and on days, with a little help from an equally enthusiastic mum and wonderful husband).

In total, I created three new paths and four no-dig* beds. I also dug one small bed for Sweet peas; planted five new David Austin roses and dug one ginormous bed for the Dahlias!

I would have preferred these to be no-dig as well, but there's no getting round it; no-dig is wonderful and I aim to always endeavour to create beds this way wherever I can, but they are expensive if you do not have your own compost to hand, so four was enough for this season.

By the end of May, there were young plants in the ground ready to get growing!

*No-dig is a method of growing plants/ flowers/ veg that is based on disturbing the soil as little as possible, building beds above the ground. This helps to maintain a healthy soil microbiome, maintaining the soil's own eco-system and keeps carbon locked beneath the ground as well as reducing, in theory, weed competition.