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.