Vegetable Garden Update –June 2026

A quick little update on my gardening adventures for June 2026. I’ve got a mostly productive vegetable patch and slow steady progress on the new herb garden and orchard, plus some exciting new plans for next year.

Vegetable Garden Bed 1

Bed 1 should contain lots of radishes but the hot weather has caused them all to bolt very early. I’ve planted replacements.

There’s plenty of beetroot, a bit on the small side but tasty enough. And the spring onions are coming along nicely.

I think my puppy has been digging in the back of this bed. All the seedlings seem to have mysteriously disappeared.

Vegetable Garden Bed 2

I have a huge amount of overwintered spring onions left. The lettuce is coming along nicely, although there are a lot more gaps than I would have liked. Cress and mustard succumbed to the heat and their replacements died before being planted out.

Vegetable Garden Bed 3

I’m giving polyculture gardening a try this year. I have mixed feelings about it.

I’ve started with a few rows of garlic which are doing nicely. The next few rows of carrots are doing very poorly – I never have much luck with carrots but I keep trying! Next my overwintered brassicas have left room for this year’s brassicas. Followed by parsnips and another row of alums, this time onions.

The alums are quite happy for the most part and my root veg are doing quite nicely alongside them but I do not have enough nets or hoops to net both my big beds, only one at a time. With a gung ho “stick it where there’s room” take on garden planning I’ve ended up with a load of potatoes under net and my brassicas exposed to the treacherous butterflies. At this point I’m just crossing my fingers are seeing if the close proximity of the alums will protect the brassicas.

Vegetable Garden Bed 4

After the alums I’ve got some early potatoes. And here’s another problem with my polyculture experiments. The potatoes are rapidly spreading over the brassicas seedlings. I think they might be protecting them from the unseasonably hot weather we’re having but at the same time they are shielding them from the light and rain.

I’ve got some more brassicas shoved in where there was a space for them. And finally a few rows of onions to finish with.

I’m quite happy with the idea of bordering the beds with alums but I’m not sure that it would be such a great idea to plant alums in the same place every year.

Vegetable Garden Bed 5

The back bed on this row has gone to pot.

I normally plant potatoes here and I have dome for many, many years because they were the only thing that would grow successfully on these back beds. I’ve cleared all the overgrown ivy from the areas next to these back beds. But now I have a volunteer elderberry bush which I’m quite happy about. It has flourished this year and is blocking much of the light from this end of the garden.

The onions at the very back of this bed are absolutely pathetic. The one’s at the front are pretty slim pickings too.

I’ve popped a hopeful couple of brassicas in there too.

But here’s another issue with polyculture. With planting potatoes in the same bed year after year I regularly have volunteers. And they are very much welcome – who wouldn’t love free plants for zero effort. But here they are kind of dotted about this bed, not enough of them for a worthwhile harvest but too many to allow the bed to be used for much else. Not enough to supress those weeds either which is one of the joys of potato plants in my opinion.

In the end this bed has been woefully under used.

Vegetable Garden Bed 6

And here’s this years main crop potatoes under netting for no random reason. Honestly what was I thinking? Well, actually I know what I was thinking, I was thinking of the carrots I planted at the front. Can you see the one sole survivor? There’s some very sorry looking garlic plants at the very front too. It took me a while to figure out what the problem was. The net isn’t quite long enough and doesn’t reliably stay on the top of the final hoop. It falls down quite often, leaving my puppy free to walk on the end of this bed.

Vegetable Garden Bed 7

And I’m having the same problem at the other end of this bed. Nothing seems to be growing. My leeks are teeny tiny and the carrots are barely clinging onto life. I’ve planted some parsnips in there somewhere and recently some turnips and swedes. I think those huge potato plants are taking all the light and nutrients.

Vegetable Garden Bed 8

Bed 8 is fully occupied and utilised, just not by me. The ground is now very compacted. I’m not overly sure what, if anything to do about it. The pictured compactor, who is known as Lucky appears to be very happy with his new residence.

I have been given the use of the strip of land to the right of my vegetable patch and plan to expand into it next year. I’m thinking that Lucky will probably move his post over to the new ground when he has the option to.

I may be generous and give him a small bed to use. I’m not sure entirely how to do that, what surface to use and how to protect the rest of my vegetables from this lolloping hound. Maybe a bed of fake grass would stop him from getting muddy in the winter.

For now I have simply sacrificed this entire bed.

Greenhouse

The greenhouse is looking a little sorry for itself. I had loads of pumpkins, squashes and cucumbers but they all died sad little deaths. I’m not sure what happened, they kind of rotted. There are just three survivors. One courgette plant and two cucumbers. A very disapointing show for this year.

The tomatoes are quite happy though.

Herb Garden

I put a new herb garden in last autumn and it’s doing quite nicely. There’s some chamomile which is gradually spreading over the front of the bed. There was some thyme but that didn’t make it through the winter. The Marjoram is flourishing along with a huge fennel plant in the back. I did have some rosemary but that got trodden on (thanks Dad) and then eaten by the puppy, not surprisingly it didn’t survive.

When I put these plants in I completely forgot that this bed is fairly well filled with bluebells which I absolutely love. I’ve risked damaging my new herbs and the bluebells by moving them as soon as they finished flowering. Hopefully they will be happy in their new home on a section of lawn that’s a horrible pain to mow.

Orchard

The orchard is flourishing so far this year, at least on the surface.

The new strawberry plants are starting to produce their first real harvest. I planted (I say planted – shoved in the ground would be more accurate) some blackcurrant prunings. They have all taken root and are even fruiting! My new gooseberry bush is also beginning to fruit – all three fruits but still it’s not even a year old yet. It did have a brother who appears to have completely disappeared . . . I suspect the puppy has been at work again. That would be the same loveable fur ball who has peed on one of my lavender bushes until said bush gave up any hope of life and withered away.

I have found signs of fire blight on my pear tree. It has always struggled and last year produced it’s first two fruits. I had high hopes for this years crops but in an attempt to eradicate the fire blight I have pruned almost all of the branches.

My plum tree is finally producing what looks to be a bumper crop. The apple tree too has upped it’s contribution for this it’s third year. However there are some unhappy looking bits of leaves and bark on these trees. I have no idea if the fire blight has spread. I’m planning on giving these trees an unusually hard prune straight after they have finished fruiting in the hopes of stopping the spread if it is fire blight.

Garden Beds

I’ve put in a new paved path (badly I acknowledge) and a new flower bed alongside it. I’m hoping that these flowering perennials will give the garden a bit of colour and brighten up this dull corner.

They have been planted against a fence which is now going to have to come down due to some work my neighbour is doing – they are installing their own much better fence on the other side of it and have offered me the use of the “no man’s land” in between. Once their fence is completed I will be taking mine down and hopefully start enjoying a significant increase in the size of my garden. I’m not making too many plans as yet because I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to pan out. Exciting times!

A Little Bit About Me . . .

Hi there! Thank you so much for stopping by my little corner of the interweb. I’m Bridie.

I’ve been crafting since I was toddling around craft shows while my mum sold knitting yarn. She used to buy me a new craft kit to keep me busy. When I grew up I set up my own online craft shop and loved every minute of it. There’s is nothing like the thrill of getting to be one of the first people to see new craft collections.

I sold my business to focus on raising my two children. They’re still young so for now I’m blogging my craft projects and sharing tutorials to inspire you. I love creating handmade cards with digital stamps. I scrapbook to preserve precious memories of my kids childhoods. I knit and sew to keep my kids in comfortable, unique clothes they love. I create batch cooked meals that give me more time to craft. And because I’m not currently earning I do all of this on a teeny tiny budget.

I’ll show you all the best ways to craft on a tight budget so you can still create a life you love.

I’ve included links to my favourite retailers for the products I’ve used to make my crafts. Click on any of the product images and links for full details. If you decide to buy any of these products I may get a small percentage of what you spend. There’s no cost to you at all.

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