Plants plants planh plah blah blah blah

Well we're back, we're married, and it' been a hectic (and very sunny & rainy apparently) couple of weeks culminating in a lot of work to be done in the garden.

Our wedding was wonderful - very very hot and sunny, lots of friends, and lot of homemade vegan food, and our honeymoon was double wonderful - a week in a cottage in Llandeilo.

Unfortunately when we got home our first discovery was that a couple of our cacti have been struck down by mealy bug, very upsetting as our plants have never had any diseases before, and this meant that after a quick bout of the Queasies we had to quarantine and spray the plants, and are now just waiting to see if that's enough. Luckily the new garden table is perfect as a temporary plant treatment zone.

Our second discovery was that in all this beautiful weather our garden had gone MAD. The beans are creeping off the end of their poles, weeds have taken over, the peas have disappeared off somewhere, and unfortunately my lack of foresight in firstly not thinning the cabbages before the honeymoon, and secondly not putting netting up, meant that we had to face a major invasion of caterpillars. After a second quick Quease I finally thinned out the, now fairly large, holey, and caterpillary, cabbages and Will and I put up some netting, so now we'll just have to see what happens.
Does anyone have a pesticide-free butterfly deterrent they can recommend? And has anyone found companion planting completely successful? We now have gypsophila and marigolds (talk about locking the stable door) and with future crops that's certainly something I think we'll make sure we do as a priority.

We harvested our first crop, or some of our first crop, which was our radishes and found them very  hot! I'm planning to plant another load in a pot this week as they were such a quick + easy to grow veg.

I've finally put some flowers in the garden to encourage bees and also just to make it a bit nicer thanks to very generous friends and family giving us gifts of money for the wedding, and already our garden is filled with buzzing. I also planted a bird bath that was from my Mum's garden as it's quite a catty area and I'm a little worried about putting water in it and encouraging birds into the garden (I know we have a bird house, but the only thing using that is a big spider).

 I also planted out a few leeks, kale and beetroot so with any luck we'll have a few more vegetables this winter. We're not even approaching producing enough to be self-sufficient in vegetables, and won't be able to in this space, but any step closer is pretty exciting at the moment. We were also able this week to go blackberrying after Will got home from work, and collected a Kilo and a half of berries with a lot more to pick  next week. We also found a couple of plum tress to go back to in a month or so, so we're planning to freeze a lot and have jam and pies for the rest of the year!

Finally, a surprise gift for the house from the husband arrived today - very exciting if you are me, which I am.

Now, I'd better go and find a job. Morrissey Sympathises.