Wildflowers in the vegetable garden and No Mow May

 My vegetable garden this year has been even wilder and freer than in previous years (despite my laid-back approach to weeding). This year, I positively sowed a wildflower seed mix and left those of the self-seeded flowers I like the most growing where they planted themselves.

As a result, my legume (beans/peas) and cucurbit (this year just squash) beds are full of flowers. I'm not sure if it's because of this or all the rain we've had this May or the dry April or just dumb luck, but for whatever reason, my broad beans, which I fitted in at the end of the bed, barely have any black fly yet. Normally, by this time of year they're absolutely covered in them. So they're much healthier than they usually are, which is a real bonus. 

I am, however, left with a bit of a conundrum: do I need to remove some of my flowers to plant my beans (some of which I started in the greenhouse, others of which I was given by a neighbour), or can I just get away with fitting them  in between the flowers? I'm going to try the latter approach, although I'm going to go on slug patrol first, as I've noticed that every single one of my brassica seedlings (radishes and turnips have been devoured by slugs and snails so that barely a trace is left. If I hadn't seen them appear with my own eyes, I'd just have thought I had dud seeds. 

All the seedlings you can see in the picture are self-seeded nasturtiums. I still don't know what happened to the root veg I planted - dud seeds or slugs. There are, at any rate, a lot of slugs and snails at large in my garden at the moment, possibly due to all the rain. Luckily, they seem not to be interested in my mangetout, so those at least have survived.

I've also been doing No Mow May. Despite all the rain, the grass hasn't actually grown that much yet, except at the edges, so mainly it just looks a bit messy. It's possibly not the best month for it, as I mainly have daisies coming up at the moment, whereas my lawn is much more diverse later in the year with clover and speedwell and buttercups (and you get to see a lot of those flowers, as fortnightly is the most it ever gets mowed).