Stephanie's Garden Blog

A fruit press and fruit crusher are invaluable if you're faced with an orchard full of apples and pears that you want to turn into fresh fruit juice or make into cider. Even if you don't have an orchard many of you have more than one fruit tree in the garden and on a good year they can produce more apples and pears than your family can comfortably eat.

It has been another week where the heat has built up, peaking on Friday in the 30's, and still no decent rainfall. The water butts are empty again. So, it was more days of what seemed like endless watering!

The week began with the photo shoot in the kitchen garden and we were very fortunate with the weather with plenty of sunshine, no rain and a gentle wind.

Over the last week there seems to have been a surge in pests in the kitchen garden, with the calabrese plants being the worst hit by an unknown culprit!

We got some much needed rain over the last week at the Kitchen Garden, unfortunately forcing the photo shoot to be cancelled, but still lots to do to make sure the garden is looking its best.

The weeds have loved the recent weather and it was time to have a blitz in the kitchen garden with lots of weeding to make the garden look at its best for the upcoming photo shoots.

Well last week was a real scorcher with the UK seeing a mini heatwave and the mercury exceeding 30 degrees celsius at time, meaning lots of watering again in the kitchen garden.

This week the main job in the kitchen garden was cutting and shaping the box hedging. It is normally done in the autumn, but this year with the rain we had over the winter period and the heat we have had recently, the box hedging was getting rather long.

Some welcome rain over last weekend gave us a rest from the watering, for a few days at least!