Whoah!

Where to start?  A cup of tea and cosy chair seem like a good place to start; this is going to be a long catch up post.

Things got a little crazy late last summer, I lost my researcher contract and went back to full time shifts bar working.   It all became a little lazy so unforgivably blogging fell by the wayside.  After doing back to back 12 hour shifts I was in no mood for a day in the garden or all the work that goes into a good blog post. (sorry) The garden kept going and we got some great late havests from everything.  It would take hours to record every little thing that happened and in all honesty I've forgotten the ins and outs of what did and didn't happen so here is an update.  I will try to post some pictures as Friday photos so you can see what I'm actually talking about.

Tomatoes
For some reason we suffered at the hands of a really wet period.  It seemed to rain and rain and keep raining in September.  Needless to say tomatoes can have too much of a good thing; just as they were getting ready to enjoy they suffered from blight.  Al and I went to bed to perfect tomatoes and woke to half dead ones.  I manage to rescue some but not nearly as much as we would have liked.  The reason for growing the Amish paste was the size.  I'm not the biggest tomato fan so the idea was to turn them into other foodstuffs rather than grow something like Gardeners delight and only Al ever get to enjoy them.  Ironically I did manage to make a lot of green tomato chutney that we have never touched since October.

Sprouts: 
After the great blizzard everywhere seemed to suffer in December we were not so optimistic about how well they had survived.  The snow here was so deep at one point even the tops were covered in 3cm.  Turned out they ♥ snow, which we should have guessed for a Christmas veg.  We took them to Kent with us for Christmas Day and shared with with Al's family.

Broad Beans
Not sure what I was expecting to happen with these to be honest however what we did grow were tasty and even managed to freeze quite a few.  We have one last tub to go!

Broccoli 
Note for this year do not buy random plants when you do not know what they are.  We had on tiny harvest of broccoli, the plants seemed to stop doing anything.   Nothing spectacular and nothing that would make me want to try again this year either.   They eventually died in the snow.

Peas
For the second year running the pea harvest was ever so slightly pants.   I get what others mean when they say some things will never grow for them.   I've come to the conclusion we won't be growing them ever again.

Parsnips
I think they died off in snow, the last we saw of them was just before it snowed.

Potatoes
We had a bumper crop of potatoes, so many that we couldn't dig eat them all in time!  What we did eat had a lovely flavour and cooked reasonably well.  The only problem we had was that the local bug life also seemed to like eating them.  Every time we tried to use them at least half had to be chucked into the local compost because they were hollow.  No idea how to stop a bug eating them under the soil this year.

Everything else seemed to do reasonably well and remain on the list for this years growing season.

We also managed to make a better base for the shed.  It's now on gravel and pushed back to the fence.  The idea is that the current plastic thing will be replaced by a normal wooden one in the very near future.  We've also been talking about putting down a slightly bigger patio area near by but that depends on how much money we have and if it's really going to be worth it in the long run.

The only thing left to note is that the great veggie adventure can now be found at www.thegreatveggieadventure.co.uk  it was a Christmas present to myself.

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.

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.  

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.

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?

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!