Gardening successes

This has been my favourite season for many years. It's a lot of work, but I slowly see how my garden is changing and I have even started harvesting already. From now on, it's a lettuce day everyday 😊

Last year, I didn't do anything with my elderflower as I had a couple of bottles with syrup from the year before, but this year I managed to make almost 7 litres which I poured in small bottles and will share them with our neighbours, friends and family. I love changing our produce into something delicious when I finally find time to do that. The process of making elderflower syrup takes time, but it is so worth it. Half of the bottles are infused with rosemary which gives the syrup a little bit bitter taste that will be perfect for cocktails and the other half is pure.

When I look at my bush at the moment I feel like I should still do something with all those flowers. You might say that I should let them be and enjoy the berries later, but the birds wouldn't let me. They pick all of them and the bush is bare by the time the berries should be ripe. It's either harvesting the flowers or nothing.

My mom mentioned that I could try to make fermented elderflower lemonade which I found a great idea. I have some experience in fermenting, but it's always a gamble for me - is it going to be fermented or will I make vinegar again? I prepared the lemonade 4 days ago. I stir it twice a day and taste it every time. It's actually very good. I give it one more day and then we will enjoy it.

This is the place where the lemonade is spending days. In the evening, I bring it inside to slow down the fermentation and to protect it from the cats that roam our garden at night.

I wonder what else I can make with those delicious flowers...

Years ago, I learned to harvest lettuce by taking only the outer leaves and live the heart untouched so that it can produce more leaves. This practice works so well for us, and every time we have tender young leaves instead of big lettuce heads. This was our very first harvest from last week. The plants took off and we simply can't eat them all, so I will be preparing lettuce bouquets for our neighbours soon.

Radishes are coming too. Honestly, I love them, but I prefer the green part. This makes amazing pesto. I take radish and carrot greens, some garlic, any nuts that I have at hand, lemon, salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, olive oil and ice cubes, blend it all together and enjoy it over pasta topped with grilled cherry tomatoes. So good!

I have never had luck with beans. Every time, I planted them, the slugs would eat as soon as they germinated and that killed them. This is the first year when I have seen success! There are a few of them that slugs destroyed, but I will put some more beans in those spot to close the gaps.

I planted tons of beans as I didn't expect many to come out and now I wonder what I will do with all those beans?

This year, I didn't manage to start tomatoes from the seeds, but my neighbours were so kind to give me 12 plants. This is the perfect amount for my greenhouse. I planted them last week and so far they are looking great.

Peppers are super strong this year. I have 24 of them and a couple of chillies. These varieties look the same and when I was planting them I got distracted by a podcast and now I have no idea which are regular peppers and which are chillies. Well, that will be a surprise later on.

Cucumbers and basil are growing well too. If it's going to be a good cucumber year then I will have enough to feed the entire street.

More cucumbers... But this is the pickling variety. I never make pickles, but we love those tiny cucumbers. If it's a good year, I would expect around 200 cucumbers out of these 6 plants - based on my prior experience with this variety.

I also have 2 green and 2 yellow zucchinis. They are very prolific, so this might even be too much...

Not everything goes as planned though. I have planted so many dill seeds that actually germinated, but got burned by sun. This is the only survivor.

And now to my flower collection...

I can't stop admiring my Love in a mist flowers. I have three shades of blue, but I would also love to have the white ones. I have seen them in my neighbour garden, so I will take some seeds to plant for next year and then my collection will be complete.

They are so precious!

This has been a very good year for roses. I'm still learning how to prune them, and it looks like I'm getting better at it as there are so many of them. All of my roses are fragrant and smell so good.

Peonies have been beautiful too. They're almost done, so I will soon remove the stalks that flowered and leave the leaves for the plant to get some energy for next year. I have never been into planting flowers, and it makes me so happy when I see these successes because it means that I'm getting better at it.

Lady's mantle is that plant that I would recommend to everyone. You simply can't kill it and the more you neglect it the stronger it gets. How convenient!

Heuchera would be number 2. I haven't done anything with this plant for years and it still comes back with beautiful purple foliage.

It looks like there will be many calendulas this year. This plant appears all over the garden and I love it as it repels pests and attracts beneficial insects.

Snails are always welcome in my garden as they eat slugs eggs. This one seems to have had an accident and I hope it wasn't me who stepped on it.

When those roses and rosemary grow a bit more we won't be able to see our garden house anymore 😊

Sharing here motivates me to take photos of my garden which I tend to forget. I love looking back at those photos and see huge difference that happen in such a short period of time - the magic of Hive.

Thank you for reading and until next time...