Thanks to lots of rain over the last few days things are continuing to grow and ripen quickly here in our garden. Although I think it's also partly due to an acquired bit of veg growing wisdom that I picked up from various books and blogs – the practice of companion planting sacrificial plants.

I've been growning nasturtiums and borage both of which are incredibly easy and cheap to grow from seed and are self replenishing as they set seed very well and so you have a free crop for next year. These are both now crawling with blackfly, aphids and caterpillars while my tomatoes, beans and raspberries are completely bug free and growing delicious crops.

There's another benefit too as there's a little ecosystem developing with ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies all swooping in to feed on the blackfly banquet. It feels good not to be spraying chemicals all over the garden and instead trusting in nature to keep my crops safe from mini-munchers and I love showing Amy the interaction between all the insects. We especially like ladybirds and can trace the entire lifecycle of the 7 spot under our very noses…

…from larvae…

…to pupae…

…to adult…

 

If you're growing any fruit or veg yourself then I'd definitely recommend planting some sacraficial companion plants alongside them – there's a good list here.

Our new camera has made me very happy today. I've never had one with a proper zoom lens before and I've had lots of fun snapping away at things in the garden and learning how to use it while the children play.

I'm also very happy that I let this one onion plant flower instead of chopping off the stem in order to grow a fat onion – the flower is rather beautiful and is getting lots of attention from the hoverflies.

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Thanks for the kind comments. The new camera is a Panasonic lumix DMC FZ38.