Gardening will resume shortly....

Sorry about the lack of garden blogging.  Things got a bit manic and a few changes took place which equalled less gardening (boooo) but I will be back taking part in the great veggie adventure in spring.   I really miss blogging and there is so much that goes on in the garden.

Just in time for the hungry gap the blog will be having a makeover.   I find that the current back drop is a little too complicated and doesn't really reflect the blog so well.  Same goes for the radvent fun but not gardening.  I also bought a co.uk and want to sort all that out.

See you soon.

Bug Off!

We seem to be having a few bug problems at the moment.  We have been potting in the garden recently rather than spending long afternoons gardening.  The heat of summer and our work patterns have been to blame.  This has lead to a free for all for bugs.  They have taken over the garden!  Black fly have invaded the broad beans, caterpillars have been spotted in our brassicas and green flies invaded the tomatoes.  


I am not so worried about the tomatoes, mostly because I have seen an increased amount of ladybirds.  Nature has taken care of that problem  for us.  What few greenfly are left will be sprayed with dilute washing up liquid.  I can't remember where I discovered this trick but last years were covered one week and fine the next so I know it works!  


The broad beans are slowly taking shape,  I'm waiting for the pods to fatten up before harvesting.  While waiting Al and I noticed that there where a few black looking bugs growing on the plant but dismissed it as nothing to worry about as we had seen a few ants enjoying a feast however during the time we've not been proactive gardeners the black bugs took advantage.  The next time we go down the black fly are everywhere and in some places thick with them.  Even on the bean pods there is a thick black line of bug. 


 For the record I do not like using pesticides.  I think nature has a way of working things out far better than man made chemicals can but the problem seemed to be getting worse.  I was starting to worry about the crop and if I would be able to harvest anything.  As much as I like leaving nature to it there is a limit!   So they have been sprayed with a general bug killer.  It seems to have worked, there appears that they have all died.   The few that remain have been spotted along with a few ants.


It is our first year of growing brassicas so it is the first year of any related problems.  I always thought that the stories about brassicas were a storm in a tea cup.   Now I'm the one freaking out over my brassicas.  I noticed a patch of yellow eggs  which were quickly brushed off.  In an ironic sort of way a catapillar came off too so it was a good job I found it when  I did.   The plan of action here is to brush off any eggs we find and spray with dilute washing up liquid and hope.

Friday Photo: Green Harvest

Ohh it's raining now

I have never cheered or wooped at the weather report before Monday.   After nearly 3 weeks with only so much as a sprinkle of rain (I speak in gardeners terms here)  we finally had a full day of rain forecast and it's kept raining.   Everything looks so green thanks to the rain and the butt is starting to slowly fill once more.   We lost access to the outdoor tap (long story) and I've been left watering everything with an Ikea bag full of milk bottles and watering can, so any rain is welcome.

I wish I had more things to update you about but work has got in the way for gardening.  All Al and I have managed is to pull a few weeds and horsetail out as we water.  Not exciting stuff nor anything to really make a good Friday photo.

Harvest wise we are almost ready to pick some of the peas and courgettes and in the first fruiting year the blackcurrant bush managed to produce about 40g of fruit.  I have no idea what to do with them so they are sitting ready in the freezer.  My grandparents love blackcurrant slices so they might go there :)

Pea, Feta & Mint Salad

Our peas are in the middle of harvest; they have ended up in soup, or freezer and my favourite way SALAD!

I make this a day in advance as it helps the flavour mingle about although it takes no time at all to make or prepare.  I personally do not cook the peas I think nothing is better than the flavour of a home grown pea and cooking them seems to take away flavour rather than add anything.  My favourite part is the combination of the tang and sweetness.  Oh and the fact that everything in the salad comes from the garden (I'm working on making my own feta, honestly!)

Pea, Feta & Mint Salad

50g feta cheese 

1 small red onion 

200g peas 

Handful of mint

1. Crumble up feta cheese into a bowl.  Try not to worry about the size of the crumbles, it just helps the cheese cling to the other ingredient better.

2. Thinly slice the red onion.  The idea is to have thin slivers of onion rather than little diced bits.  Add it to the bowl.

3. Chop up the mint stalk and all. Try to make sure it becomes bruised as it releases the mint flavour.  Add it to the bowl.

4. Mix everything together.  Don't worry about it making it look neat, the nature of the crumbled feta makes it nearly impossible.

5. Enjoy your salad.  Al and I have been munching with wholemeal cous cous and peri peri chicken.

Quillquiña

I love Mexican food, the eating and the cooking of it and I thought it was about time I started to grow my own ingredients.  As we don't have a greenhouse, putting chillies out of the question, I settled on growing a South American herb called quillquiña.  It has a sharp, earthy citrus taste and used a bit like coriander in salsas although two or three leaves seem to be enough.   I started them off indoors in the spring

and finally decided now summer is here it is about time I placed them into the herb patch.  They should grow to be around 3 feet tall.

And my herbs really need a good long drink.  Time to see if there is any easy Inca or Aztec rain dances in honour of my new Latino import.

Waiting Around in the Sunshine

After a wonderful week on holiday it was about time we returned to some gardening!  There were the typical amount of weeds that needed sorting and hoeing out but after that there is only a lot to admire. A huge weed patch had grown at the same place the sweet williams should have grown.  Rather than wait and the weeds grow too strong I hoed the whole area so they will have to wait for next year.

 We are still at the waiting stage there are a lot of things going on but very little to harvest.  We came home to find that the little gems had bolted so have only had tiny harvest of lettuce so far.  The strawberry plants have not produced anywhere near as much fruit as last year however they were moved out of containers this spring. The only ones I have tasted tasted odd, almost musty so they went into a glass of pimm's.  I'm hoping these ones will taste better:

The tomatoes have finally recovered from their trauma of being left in their pots a bit too long.

 At one stage I thought I would be blogging about how badly they have done and it looked like there would be no tomatoes to enjoy this year.  Now I can see the first signs of flowers and the plants remain a lush green.  Al pointed out a tiny greenfly in the photo but I don't think it's anything to worry about. I spray the tomatoes with dilute washing up liquid which seems to help because I never seem able to attract ladybirds.

All the beans and peas have started flower, I have to confess that most of the varieties we are growing this year were bought because the seeds were reasonable rather than majestic looking blooms.   I'm glad I can see flowers because I was beginning to panic I'd left them too late to be able to enjoy a lengthy harvest but it's clear now that this will not be the case.

Do you remember me posting about how we cheated and bought plants after the late frosts?  Well the first courgette plant is beginning to show a tiny courgette which will hopefully be ready to eat soon. I always have a knack for forgetting to pick the flowers for stuffing until they are too open to stuff.  My favourite time is when they are ready with the tomatoes so they can be made into a light sauce or ratatouille.  This year it will be even sweeter if the red onions are ready at the same time.  

Friday Photo: Potatoes

Friday Photo: Tricolore Salad

 Made with home grown spinach and basil.
If only our tomatoes were this ready!

One-ish year on

Looking few my photos I came to realise how much of the garden we've already managed to transform.  As I've posted about before, the biggest problem the great veggie adventure has faced is the fact that the garden has been so abandoned.  The last date anyone really did anything (before us) is about 2001 and we only started last year.  There is a huge amount of work that still needs to be done in order to achieve a finished garden.  In order to actually get some garden we started on digging out the veg patch last spring and managed this:

To the side is a row of what we guess was once a flower bed because this spring we had the most impressive weeds in the form of some very tradtional English bluebells.

                          

There were a few signs of its former life still left when we started the veggie adventure.  There was also an overgrown rose bush which had started to trail across the rickety wooden fence.  It was so bad we started to wonder if it should be like that or not.  Early on the rose had a brutal chop and has flourished ever since; seems it was focused on growing and not flowering.  This year we have taken the same approach to the hawthorn that was left to grow wild in the hope that it will too bush out and not grow out.  In place of weeds we slowly started to plant, first the herb garden went in and then the courgettes followed.

With all that work to do we left the garden as it was for the summer focusing on growing and harvesting our own veg with varying levels of success.  Never keep peas in grow bags for a start!  In the late summer we had the helping hand of some farm/industrial weed killer killing off a lot of the weeds that had taken hold of the top area of the garden.   Leaving us to manually manage the bottom nearest to us, where the coldstore and shed presently live.  The weed killer worked, even killing off the dandelion roots (!) and with hard work in the autumn we have managed to get to the workable plot we have today.  Twice the size of the orginal plot with double the veg growing.  Who knows what I will be posting next year?

Newsflash!

The grobox is actually growing something!

I had a quick peek about on coming home from work last night and noticed that there are a few green shoots coming out from the right area.  They look like a variety of bean but I cannot tell so well nor remember what seeds were in the box.  I had unfairly written it off as an experiment that wasn't going to work so I'm pleased that something is happening.

Friday Photo: Blackcurrants-in-waiting

Sorry it's a bit late!

Tidying up

After nearly a week of rain Al and I managed to get out there and do a bit of work.  We have got to the stage were we are just waiting for things to ripen, as the majority of the seeds are in and growing.  Tiny courgettes are starting to form and the strawberries are formed but still white.  We leave for holiday in a week so we will return to find that there is loads to harvest.  (I hope!)  By the looks of it the first harvest will be little gem lettuces.  They are getting quite fat and firm and we only have a few limp leaves left from a supermarket.  For the sake of lettuce karma I planted a mix of lettuce seeds between two slow growers.  I have no idea what type as they are described as a surprise all I do know is that they are a heritage.

The unfortunate thing with all the rain was the amount of weeds that have started to spread  so they all got hoed out.  We have a huge horsetail problem so it takes even longer to weed as we try to pick off as much as possible.  (I'm inclined to believe that the dinosaurs died not from a meteorite but from extreme frustration with the bloody stuff.)  Unfortunately that's all we can do as the garden next door is only bothered with twice a year so  we have to keep a close eye on all types of weeds; including bramble canes as thick as your thumb.  At times it feels like an never ending story.

Also some impromptu fruit nets were placed over the fruit before the local birds saw the ripened fruit and decided to have a snack as we are on holiday.

Friday photo is coming once I get time to get sorted.

Friday Photo: Summer Flowers

Bank Holiday Madness

I'm lucky that often my regular days off fall on Bank holidays so I get to enjoy them with everyone else.  Unfortunately Al had to go to work but this time I had my hands full with my niece and nephew helping me out as my Dad finished a project started last autumn.

As you can imagine we got a lot of planting finished, always helpful to have a bit of child labour in the right situation.  They both helped out planting out the tomatoes into their final place. The fork is/was bigger than my niece but she managed to plant a fair few tomatoes!   We also planted  little gems, beetroot, carrots and sweet Williams seeds, in fact the majority of seeds left to plant.   Their garden at home is about the size of our plot so it was lovely to see them getting so into everything.  In the end they also planted a pumpkin each to take home with them with a bit of luck I will be blogging to tell you how big they are at hallowe'en.  

We also placed out the CDs to use as bird scarer.   Originally I left my nephew to take them out into the garden and then we were going to put them out together.  He jumped the gun a little and started to scare the birds his way.....

Yep, he propped the CDs (in the covers) on to our bamboo markers and left them.  I'm not sure if he was making a comment about my taste in music or not but as one was a freebie of British birdsong I doubt it would have much affect on keeping birds out.
Publish Post

The project my Dad was finishing was the shed base.  My Dad is the type of person who has to do a job properly otherwise he doesn't start or doesn't do a project, so they can take a long time to get done.  As a child I fondly remember the one piece of wall paper up in the living room.  So when Al was given the shed as a birthday present we needed a base.  Due to the garden being so forgotten about we had already found a range of paving slabs ranging from brick to huge thick sandstones (as seen in the middle of the photo) and had decided to use them rather than buy cheap new slabs.  About last November he came and put down the front row of bricks and then it started to rain and kept raining so it never got finished.  Roll forwards to  this week and a few hours later it as done!  The problem now is that we like it too much to use it a shed base and keep toying with the idea of using it as a patio and putting the shed further back.    It doesn't get a lot of sun and is next to the compost bin but is nearer than other points to our door.  What do you think?

Friday Photo: Chives

So it's easier to see the gardens progress I've decided to post a photo every Friday and today is the first day.  I can't promise they will be anything spectacular but a fun way of keeping things updated.

Squeekwave!

I know that this weekend has been stupidly hot for the majority of the the UK, I clocked the thermometer at 29c on Sunday but that is not part of the great veggie adventure.  I have laryngitis so I can only really squeek, not good to work in a bar.  In between the heat and generally feeling ill I have managed to do a lot of work in the garden,  Al claims to have but it looks very much the same so I can't comment on his work...yet ;)

Bamboo bean poles

First the bean and pea poles have gone up and the seeds in.  It was an inventive moment putting them together after realising that I had forgotten to buy anything to keep the bamboo poles together.   So the poles have been placed in a circle and then held and tied with jewellery wire to make the tipees.  The peas were a gift last year and the broad beans were the only ones I could see in wilkos.   The other beans are a far more exciting heritage variety from the real seed catalogue.  Cherokee trail of tears pole beans possibly the longest named vegetable we ware growing this year. However I digress, I am excited to be growing heritage varieties because of the importance to being able to grow something with a real connection to history and knowing we can save our own seeds is exciting in itself.  We have a few other heritage varieties from the same catalogue on the go as well.

I know it's late to plant seeds but the frosts have been so late and I've been procrastinating about when to plant everything and thought this weekend would be a good start.  Al has planted a small row of courgette from seeds and planted the Brussels sprouts.  There are lettuces (I don't know the varieties due to buying mixed seeds) parsnips, carrots, beetroot and a few herbs left to be planted.  The melons are an on going challenge as I'm still slightly scared of them not doing anything.  We have decided to leave butternut squash and pumpkin for next year after the late frosts killed them off. There are a few bare patches left, which will be filled with sweet williams and scatter seeds along with the normal marigolds, to try and keep carrotfly away.

Cold-store little gems and spinach.

I also planted a grobox In what looks like a odd shaped pizza box is supposedly a full organic veggie garden, I'm a bit sceptical that it will grow into anything. If you have grow one before please let me know what to do with it!! Al and I saw them at Christmas and decided they were a bit on the pricey side so forgot about them however after mooching about in a local market I saw one for sale at a grand total of £1.50 so we're giving it ago. Wish us luck!!!

Overdue Update

Sorry for the delay things in April/ early May got very hectic and the garden suffered a little, very little progress was made so there was little to blog about.   I will update everything with photos tomorrow hopefully!!

Around the start of April I started with the first batch of seedlings which later suffered at the hand of the late frosts, nearly everything either died or ended up as a bug snack.  Now we're in the position of starting everything again as the weather warms up.  Hopefully it's not too late but we have bought fully grown courgette and cucumber plants as a precaution.  The tomatoes were far more fortunate and have really come into their own recently.  I placed some little gem lettuces and spinach into the cold store which are doing really well and should be ready for harvesting soon.  Also maris peer and king Edward potatoes were planted, the maris peers are are main potatoes for the year the King Edwards are a Ranger challenge which I will up date you all on later!  Both are doing oka nd seem to have survived the cold snap.

Later on the strawberries were moved out of a container into the fruit patch of the garden joining the gooseberry and blackcurrant bush.  My Grandpa gave me some fruit netting which I will be protecting with with soon, I  remember him growing tonnes of strawberries when I was around 6-8 and it's really lovely knowing that I have his nets to use now.  The hope is that by putting them directly into the ground we will be able to grow the runners as well.  Last year there simply wasn't the room to grow the runners so we lost some plants.  The spare container will be used for bedding plants near to our only door.

I'm sure there is a heap of things I've forgotten over the past few weeks which  will be rolled into the following posts.  Same with photos!

First dig of spring

After uming and arring about re-starting the gardening I came home from work and started to dig.  (Al and I did start but quickly gave up because it was too cold/wet/hard work, but today it was too glorious not to).   One of the benefits of having a back garden as you mini-allotment is that I can work on it any time I wish to.

The garden itself has spent several years being ignored or used as a alternative for the local dump, this has meant that any work Al and I have done has taken almost twice as long; a bag is needed for the weeds, another for the excess soil and another for the rubble.    Given the time of year it feels as if we're up against the clock to sort the patch out before it gets too warm.   Last year was a bit of a rush but we did managed a small plot with successful  early potatoes, beetroot, courgette and parsnip we also unsuccessfully grew carrots and peas.   This year we're being adventurous and have decided to really go to town and grow as much as we can fit in!  Yes, we're the type of gardeners who throw the seeds in a hope that something happens because of this I count myself as a highly methodical gardener.

So to start the gardening off I've spent my time digging space for our home made cold frame, which will hopefully be used for growing melons, although I have to confess I have no idea how big or small melon vines grow so it might not be used to grow melons in.  By digging the space I also managed to create two huge bags of spare soil that needs to be dumped.   As an ironic birthday present, in January, I bought Al a gooseberry bush,  I say ironic because I hate gooseberries and his birthday is in August.  It has been living on our door stop ever since  and today it finally ended up in the garden.  

A (very) brief history

We moved in in 2008 and in the following spring started to grow our own vegetables.  It was so enjoyable that we've decided to do it all over again and keep a blog to see how it all goes.  This year, growing a lot more than we did the year before and following the plant and hope method.  Such is so is that I have no idea of the varieties that are grown.