I came back from holiday somewhat nervous. The Environment Agency had been sending me flood alerts while we were away abroad and I knew it had been bucketing it down and probably regularly temporarily flooding the garden. I was convinced I was going to come back to devastation, mildew and rot. But no. I came back to a green and verdant garden, with huge, healthy, bushy tomatoes, tall peas and sweetcorn, but a continuing failure for anything except weeds to grow up the far end by the shed. This is what it looked like after I spent all morning tidying it up:
And this is what it look like au naturel before I tackled the weeds and my other half dealt with the lawn:
The huge tuft of grass in the middle is from where an animal crept into the accidentally unlocked shed one night, pulled out a plastic packet of fertiliser and tore it open over that spot.
If nothing else, it's really convinced me of the value of fertiliser.
Before I went on holiday I decided to use shredded paper as a mulch around the strawberries (instead of straw) to protect them from the soil, as I didn't think the cardboard I'd already put down was doing a good enough job. I think it was only partially successful. I came back from holiday to a load of strawberries completely covered with a powdery mould, so I removed all of those. But I was left with a large number of red and delicious strawberries.
My apples are also growing well.
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