Made with home grown spinach and basil.
If only our tomatoes were this ready!
If only our tomatoes were this ready!
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
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?
Monday, 14 June 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Friday, 11 June 2010
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.
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, 4 June 2010
Thursday, 3 June 2010
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?
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?
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