June

More and more to eat from the plot now. Mizuna and wild rocket for salad, kale for cooking greens, the first cabbage, peas and broad beans any day now, more asparagus than you could shake a stick at, baby carrots and the first strawberries.

Lots of flowers for the bees and butterflies and a few sweet peas for me, the solstice and a supermoon, sunshine and showers  - what more could I ask for?

Clover paths

I've been dividing the plot up into beds about four feet wide over the past couple of years, divided by paths sown with white clover. This means I can work the beds from the paths without compacting the soil; it also makes it easier to get around. The paths have needed some resowing here and there and a bit of weeding in spring but otherwise are working out well. I've made them sixteen inches wide - the width of the mower.

Plants for pollinators

My collection of plants for pollinators is growing apace and the bumblebees in particular seem well pleased, pollinating my peas, broad beans, raspberries and strawberries. Flowering this month have been phacelia, ox-eye daisies, perennial wallfower, sweet rocket, nepeta, wild roses, hardy geranium, corn poppies, knautia macedonia, cupid's dart, crimson clover, pink and bladder campions and love-in-a-mist. And new introductions this year have been vipers bugloss - a biennial which I sowed last year - and giant scabious, which I snaffled from someone's garden. There's been May blossom in the hedgerow and the one they're really mad for - cotoneaster.

Vipers bugloss (Echium vulgare)...

...soon being investigated.

Giant scabious (Cephaloria gigantea)...

...also arousing some interest...

...but the annual phacelia is still the most popular.