At last some hot weather and everything is starting to flourish …

Above, the first small fruits have appeared on the fig tree.  They’ll thrive if this sunny weather continues.  The sun seems to make them sweeter by the day.

Meanwhile, below, the pretty purple rhubarb sticks are growing well.  These are in their own small bed, carefully transplanted from another bed, and seem to have survived that move.  As always, come harvest time we won’t pick all the stalks but rather will leave a few so the plant is happy for next year.

Elsewhere, one of the main beds now has young broad bean plants and perpetual spinach beet growing alongside.  Even though they’ve only been up a couple of weeks, the broad beans are already suffering the troublesome ant/blackfly farming problem.  The plants are too young for the usual solution of chopping the tops off: they’d end up stunted with few pods. So for now I’ve just put some ant bait nearby and hope that’ll help until the plants are big enough for more drastic anti-ant action.

Finally, the overwintered onions are now bulbing up, getting a nice round shape just visible at the surface.  They’re pretty self sufficient but I’ll feed them shortly to help them grow.  My only worry is that a few weeks ago the mesh tunnel over them was full of some kind of fly.  I fear it might have been onion fly and when lifted the onions will be ruined.   But they could equally be OK, so I’ll wait and see.