The companion planting is flowering and, at least in some cases, working

It's a great year in the greenhouse so far this year.

One thing that's going well is that the peppers, chillies and tomatoes I've grown from seed are getting big and bushy with plenty of flowers:

Some have even set fruit already.

But just as importantly, after two years of constantly battling aphids and spider mites in the greenhouse, I haven't had any infestations of pests yet, other, strangely enough, than on my companion plants, which I put there to discourage pests. This has been far more successful than anything I've tried in the past. This year's companion plants have been chrysanthemums that I grew from seed and geranium cuttings. The geraniums were not technically intended to be companion plants. I just wanted to make cuttings and this seemed the most sensible place for them. I have no idea if they're helping. But something clearly is. And they're making the greenhouse prettier to boot.

I will definitely be growing chrysanthemums again next year - and possibly taking geranium cuttings again too.
Outside, it's not so clear how well the companion planting is going. I planted calendula with the carrots and leeks. Firstly, I failed to look in advance how big they were going to get, so I planted too many too close together in clumps by my approach of scattering randomly. Secondly, they're covered in some sort of black insect. Now, calendula are considered good companion plants for the very reason that they attract all the pests and keep them away from your other plants. But I'm not so sure my carrots and leeks were ever going to be affected by these.

I continue to hope that they have fooled the carrot fly. However, I am not impressed by the calendulas' colours.

I thought I had selected much more subtle shades.

Never mind. You live and learn. Speaking of which, I'm not entirely sure how sensible my decision to grow black hollyhocks was either. Up close, the individual flowers look beautiful, especially when the sun is shining on them and you see they're not so much black as very deep purple.

However, the plants as a whole swamp the flowers with their big messy leaves, almost all of which have caught hollyhock rust.

Possibly these would look good adding height to a border, but I'm not sure. I suspect hollyhocks need a flower colour that stands out more from their leaves to look really good. I think I may have to take the RHS's advice and grow them as a biennial only, removing them this year after flowering.
On the other side of the garden, my outdoor tomatoes are doing well. Although they are barely visible from a distance, I left some violas that self-seeded themselves in with them.

My squashes and courgettes have also finally started to grow. For ages they just sat there at the size at which they left the dining room or greenhouse, but now they're having a little growth spurt, I think because of all this warm weather.

Doing far less well are my beetroots, lettuces and brassicas. Slugs and snails are to blame for my brassica problems, and as I'm refusing to use slug pellets, my only recourse is to pull out the sage and marjoram where the slugs and snails are sheltering. I've been waiting for the sage to stop flowering to do so, so I don't deprive the bees. I think we're close enough to the end that I'll remove it this weekend or next, depending on how much time I get.

I'm not sure why my beetroots are doing so badly. It might be the heat. They strike me as a plant that doesn't like it too warm. My lettuce is also suffering from slugs and snails. The wee beast have removed whole plants over night. There's nothing nearby I can sensibly remove to reduce the slugs and snails in that area, so I think I'm going to have to wait till my slug rings are available from elsehwere in the garden or just accept that I won't be getting much lettuce this year.

Having had to grow my bean plants in pots until they were big enough to survive the attentions of the local snail population, my beans are now doing well. It might help that they're planted on the shady side of the garden, as I don't think they like it too hot. We'll have to see what happens when it comes to producing beans for the violetta, runner and the blue lake beans. The broad beans have done me proud, though.

My raspberries have got even huger than I remember them from last year and are getting ready to flower.

They need no help from me at all. I don't water them. I don't companion plant for them. All I do is chop off or dig up the runners when they try and send them out into the grass. Digging up is much more successful than chopping off.
Let's finish with a couple of pictures of the garden as a whole:

Purple, green and yellow mangetout, the colourful vegetable garden

There was a brief break in the dark skies and rain early this afternoon and I used it to take pictures of the garden. The garden has loved all the water and I now have mangetout in three different colours. Luckily I turned out to have managed to plant all three different types, as I bought the seeds in a mixed packet.

From the remaining petals around the tops of the mangetout, it looks like my white flowers produce green mangetout and my red and purple flowers produce yellow and purple ones. The year of colourful vegetable gardening is getting off to a flying start here.
I'm also beginning to see my first strawberries.

But mainly my strawberry plants just look like a sea of green leaves, hiding their unripe fruits beneath a leafy canopy.

Elsewhere, I've ended up with more purple plants than standard green ones. Where I had mixed seed packets with identical seeds in them, I don't think this was really my fault. It was sheer chance that meant I ended up with more purple kohlrabi than green ones.

Mind you, next to all that rocket, I don't think it actually matters too much. It makes more of a contrast.
What was entirely my fault was that I planted twice as many trays of purple kale as of green kale.

I've got a more similar number of purple beans and normal green beans (almost impossible to tell apart in this picture unless you look at the full size version, where the purple beans currently have slightly less yellow leaves).

Unless you count my runner beans, in which case I have more green-coloured beans.

I also planted a couple of strips of red and green lettuces, where the red ones seem to be surviving better than the green ones.

The chard to the right of them is all rhubarb chard and the beetroot to the right of that is all Boltardy, but has great patches missing where it's either failed to germinate or been eaten.
While I'm talking about the colourful vegetable garden, did I mention already that I also planted flowers? There's a section of them in the full shade bed at the back where vegetables won't grow. Apart from the sage, it's the only area where they're already flowering.

Elsewhere in the garden, apart from the sage, the flowering plants are largely still in the growing stage and haven't flowered yet.

In other news, you can very much see the prevailing wind direction in my garden in the plants (pictures taken facing in opposite directions):

Let's finish off with another picture of the garden as a whole:

Nearly first harvest time

I'm about to get my first harvest from the garden. I feel very behind compared to some of the vegetable gardens I see in my Facebook groups. But even getting this far was a constant battle against slugs and snails - and much harder when you decide to forego slug pellets for the sake of the environment. My mangetout, which I grew in pots until they were big enough to stand a fighting chance against my snails, flowered for the first time on 1 June. The pictures below are examples of the flowers for a purple one.

And I also have white flowers that I expect to turn into either yellow or green mangetout.

To my mind, the individual flowers are as pretty as sweet peas, but there aren't enough of them to be noticeable from a distance.

Since the flowers came out on 1 June, I'm now as far as my fist mangetout appearing.

The shade garden is also currently very beautiful.

As are the succulents and bonsai trees currently sunning themselves in front of the greenhouse  (although not in the least due to my efforts, they are the province of our house's largely indoor gardener):

But like the pea flowers, these areas need visiting close up. From a distance the garden is still largely looking rather bare, although slightly less so now I've got the tomato plants out.

Close up, the calendula, carrot and leek (and less intentionally nasturium) beds are also finally beginning to come into their own, although I've had to scatter some more carrot seeds in an attempt to cover the bare patches.

You can see how well the onions are going from even the aerial picture (the mass of green leaves at the front, just to the left of the centre). They're my best growers of the year so far. Unless you count my broad beans, but I'm a bit nervous to count them. I've kept them largely slug and black fly free (emphasis on the largely), but there's still only very few broad bean pods. I'm a little worried I may have sprayed away most of them with water jets from the hose when removing black fly or that they're in too much shade to make it through to bean production. They are currently in one of the shadiest locations in the garden outside of the shade garden.

In other bad news, my purple beans have been so badly massacred by slugs and snails despite my best efforts with the slug rings that I've had to start again in pots. I think the problem may be that I put the slug rings around a cane as well as the plants and the snails went to the effort or climbing all the way up another cane and down again into my slug ring. That or I somehow left another bridge for the snails to climb in. The copper sides of slug rings only work when there's no way for the slugs and snails to bypass them. Although the good news there is that I don't think it was too late to start again in pots, I should hopefully still get a crop.

I'm going to wait until the beans have each grown a second pair of leaves before I plant them out in the ground, as that seems the point at which my beans seem more or less able to survive death by slug.

In other good news, I have a new friend in the garden. I've now stomped on so many snails and left them out on the soil or lawn that a local blackbird has come to regard me as enough of a friend and source of food to be prepared to spend time in the garden while I'm outdoors!

In other good news, the tomato plants in the greenhouse that had previously been living in the dining room are thriving. To a slightly lesser extent, so are the peppers, so hopefully there'll be a good harvest from the greenhouse this year.