Making my garden grow

Seed box stocktake

2013-01-06T11:33:00.001-08:00

It finally stopped raining this weekend so I dashed outside and picked up some rubbish that had blown into the garden and got my seedbox from the shed. The garden is looking really sorry for itself, this year I must do something to make the courtyard close to the house look a bit nicer. I need an attractive climber to grow along a wall and lots of big green plants to put into pots. I keep pinning things to my garden board on pinterest in the hope that desire will lead to action.

Anyway, seeds I have left over from last year:

Seed	Sow	Harvest
Mesclun salad	April to October
Chamomile	Spring
Purple Sprouting Broccoli	March to May	(hopefully) edible the following year.
Sugar snap peas	April & May	June & July
Sage	April & May
Mangetout	April to June	August to October
Sunflowers	January to June
Busy Lizzies	February to April	flowers July to October

So I need to buy potatoes, squash, and tomatoes.

Thinking about 2013

2012-12-29T04:37:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it has been a year since I started growing my own food. I've learned a lot in the past year and I plan to make some changes for next year.Last year I grew too much of lots of things and too many different things (2012 plan). This year I'm going to focus on the produce I really enjoyed and try some new varieties.

I'm keeping all of my fruit (rhubarb, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and cherries) and of course the kiwi vine. I'd like to get an apple tree so I'll have a think about where I could put one. Maybe I'll buy a dwarf tree in a massive pot until I decide.

I'll grow potatoes again, they are so easy and useful (and such fun to dig up) and I'll keep trying celeriac. Butternut squash is another definite as are tomatoes, lettuce and peas. I'll grow more herbs and I'll hope for some asparagus from my asparagus bed next year.

Turnips are out (they make that end of the garden smell like turnip and I really hated it) and I'm not going to bother with leeks, onions or garlic. Cauliflower was a waste of time, the slugs got to it so quickly I got the heebie jeebies just thinking about eating any of it.

When it stops raining I'm going to go out to the shed and get my seed tin to see what I have and I'll start planning what I will need to buy.

tidying up

2012-10-21T12:56:00.002-07:00

We had an unexpectedly nice day today so I got outside to do a little pottering around and general tidying.

The compost bin had developed a serious lean so after I lifted all of the tomato plants (which I'm hoping will ripen in my kitchen) we tipped out the compost, repositioned the bin and refilled it. I took the opportunity to get long suffering husband to tip all of the dead container plants and used soil into the bin so that I could wash all of the pots out. Of course, when I came back into the house I walked past an old potato bag full of soil that I'd forgotten; we'll maybe get it next time!

I pulled up a leek and harvested one of my butternut squash while I was out there, a couple of onions and a garlic bulb from the shed and a carrot and potato from the supermarket made a big pot of squash soup which is delicious. I do think that the squash have been really satisfying to grow; they are interesting as plants, have beautiful flowers and turn into a resilient veg that makes me smile. I'll definitely grow them next year.

I have two artichokes which could probably be eaten but I've decided to let them flower instead.

It's been a while

2012-09-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

A combination of terrible weather and first trimester exhaustion has kept me out of the garden for months but today we finally got a dry weekend when I had energy and no other plans so I could get outside at last.

Some of my plants have survived the neglect and others have not. The cauliflowers have been badly eaten by slugs so they all went straight to the compost bin. Some of the tomato plants have early blight so I salvaged what I could and disposed of the plant that was beyond saving; I now have a bowl of green tomatoes in my kitchen which I'm hoping will ripen. A few of my turnips looked wrong, I think they have suffered from a mineral deficiency perhaps because of the rain? One had little holes in it and a slug nearby so it went into the compost too. There are still a few healthy looking turnips in the ground which I hope will last over the winter.

Other than that I earthed up the leeks, did some weeding and admired my butternut squash which are sprawling and climbing in amazing directions.

Next year I'm not going to bother with leeks, cauliflower, garlic or onions, I haven't really enjoyed growing them, I'll grow more fruit and peas instead.

Soup weather

2012-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

We are still having weather that is winter one day and summer the next so I decided to make soup this weekend using a turnip I have been eyeing up for a while.

It was much bigger than anything I'd have bought and with some of last weekend's potato harvest, an onion, some carrots and lentils I made a huge pot of soup and felt very pleased with my industry.

busy busy

2012-07-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

It has been ages since I last updated and my only excuse is that I have been really busy - and at least some of my busyness has been in the garden. To keep me right I'm going to backdate this post to the weekend I actually did all of this work even though I'm only just getting around to posting.

The weekend before last we had a dry morning while I was babysitting my nephew who is 5 and therefore the perfect age to help find potatoes. He enjoyed a very muddy morning pulling up all of my potato plants at the back of the garden exclaiming "Another potato!" every time he found one, he was absolutely thrilled. While we were working my son (who is 2) happily filled buckets with earth using his plastic spade from the sandpit (I'll have him double digging next year I'm sure!) and carried them from place to place.
I forgot to photograph my harvest but I filled a washing up bowl with potatoes most of which were a decent size. I have a handful of tiny ones that could have done with longer in the ground but the leaves looked a bit dodgy so I didn't want to leave them.

In a fit of industry I kept working and got so much done:

I dug over the bed that was now empty and moved the strongest looking leeks over to it (I had far too many of them all too close together), I also thinned out my celeriac a bit by moving my thinnings into half of the old potato bed.
All of the lettuce I had planted beneath the tomato plants had bolted so I cut it way back and thinned the plants out. It is already starting to grow back some tasty looking leaves so I don't feel too bad about the volume I ended up putting in the compost heap.
I cut down my giant camomile and have tied it in bunches to dry in the hut (which smells amazing)
I planted my 10p (Wilkinson's sale!) carrot seeds in an empty trough in the first compost out of my compost bin. It feels like magic to make compost out of rubbish.
I dug up one of my garlic bulbs but it didn't look very big so I replanted it, I'll check again in a few weeks.

Then I had a big mug of tea and lots of cake and admired my flowers.

A couple of dry days

2012-07-13T01:33:00.000-07:00

As you know it has been raining for weeks and is forecast to keep raining for weeks still. Fortunately yesterday the sun shone (although sadly I was at work) and today is forecast to be dry so I am going to try to get some essential tasks done today. I'm using my handy book the Pocket Guide to the Edible Garden to identify what I need to do and update my to do list.

Yesterday I managed to take some pictures, I can't believe that everything is growing with so little sunshine!

Butternut squash

Camomile

Peas!

Pansies

The first tomato :)

Terrible weather = not much gardening

2012-07-02T22:34:00.001-07:00

Since my last post there has been non-stop rain so I have done very little gardening. I put some flowers into pots at the weekend and I emptied a bag of potatoes that I thought looked like it had early blight.

I love digging up potatoes, and they were delicious.

Other than that I've been eating strawberries and blackcurrants. The squash has been flowering (never two flowers at once though so I'm not too hopeful of fruit), the tomato plants are flowering and some of my peas are starting to flower.

It has just been on the news that this has been the coldest June since 1991 and has had double the average rainfall so it is not surprising that the garden is looking a bit sorry for itself.

It's nice to be back

2012-06-17T15:17:00.001-07:00

We had a little holiday last week so I was away from the garden for a while. Before I left I was really worried that we'd have good weather and my plants would die, I needn't have worried, it rained almost every day. There have been some really high winds but there hasn't been much damage thankfully.

It has been nice coming home and seeing how the garden has changed in just a few days. In a brief sunny spell I took some photos.

Artichoke growing under a jamjar cloche

Brambles are nearly ready!

More lettuce than I am going to be able to eat

I think that is a turnip!

I ate this straight after taking the picture

Flowers on my squash

Dead slugs!

2012-06-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

Yay! Lots of slugs in my beer traps this morning and a few dead ones near the slug pellets.

Declaration of war

2012-06-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Slugs and snails are devouring my poor seedlings so I have declared war. This morning I found a snail clinging to the jam jar which is protecting my delicate artichoke seedling.

On the fenced off areas of the garden I've put down slug pellets and in areas that the rabbit or my son could get to I have set traps using tesco's finest value lager (81p for 4 cans! Amazing - I kind of wonder what it tastes like).

I didn't do much else today, I cut the grass and pulled up loads of creeping buttercup (which looks pretty as a posy). I didn't do anything about the roots. We are having a few days away and the rabbit will be on holiday too so I'm going to take advantage and begin chemical warfare when I know there will be a week without the bunny. I've bought some weed-feed-mosskiller for the grass and I have some gysopholate for the patio. I would like to be one of those gardeners that doesn't need chemicals but I don't have enough time to manage this without them.

Other than that I was pleased that my strawberries have recovered and my squash is starting to flower. Also, a foxglove has flowered unexpectedly which was nice.
I hope you are having a good long weekend too :)

A new toy

2012-05-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

I got a new camera! I'm really pleased with it and I have been taking hundreds of bad photos as an excuse to play with all of the buttons.

Now I'm going to force you to look at them.

Blackberries through the netting

Chive flower

New camera :)

about to flower

a happy sunflower

Catch up post

2012-05-26T23:50:00.001-07:00

I've had a really busy week this week and have done no gardening. The weather has been incredible so I have managed to sit in the garden and get sunburned twice.

On Thursday morning I realised that I hadn't been watering my Strawberry basket. It is very unhappy, this is what it looked like on Thursday morning.

It is looking a little better now but is still in a bit of a huff. Hopefully I will nurse it back to health.

My chives are starting to flower, I love the way they look. I'm also very pleased that I managed to take this picture with my P&S camera.

Chive flower

We have been eating lettuce from the garden and the kitchen window sill all week which is great. This is my lettuce growing indoors in a variety of containers.

Do you remember ages ago, in early April the naughty rabbit chewed my kiwi vine in half? I put the top half in a jar of water in my kitchen and this morning I noticed it was starting to flower! I has been in water for nearly two months so I can't believe it is still alive. I'm not really sure what to do with it!

Miracle flowering kiwi vine

Such a busy day

2012-05-20T12:57:00.001-07:00

It has been a glorious day today so we spent most of it out in the garden. Fabulous husband took three car loads of old slabs to the dump which let me tidy up the back patio and get rid of some monster weeds. I also earthed up the potatoes with some help from the toddler who loved tipping his little bucket of earth onto the plants. I also sowed a few more lettuce, camomile and celeriac seeds to fill in some gaps.

I decided to tackle the potato plant in the compost bin. This is what it looked like when I opened the door, everything seems to be composting well at the bottom except for the very healthy looking potato plant.

I had a little dig around and managed to get (I think) all of of the plant out. As a reward for this I also found seven little potatoes which I'm going to eat tomorrow.

I also planted all of my indoor grown squash, cauliflower, asparagus and leeks (mostly because I want my windowsills back). We fashioned some rabbit defence from canes and garden mesh to stop Daisy eating it all. The cola cans are to stop me poking my eye out on the canes when I'm weeding.

Years ago, when we bought the house, there was a horrible bush in the patio near the house, I pulled it up and soon afterwards we put down turf in the main garden and got some builders in to make a retaining wall so that the back is now fairly flat. The space that used to have the bush was used by the builders to dump a lot of sand which they never took away. We have had a bench sitting on top of this and I have been ignoring it for years. Today I decided that I would put some herbs in that patch so the toddler and I put all of the sand in a big bucket, I was so pleased to discover that under all the sand were a few metres of edging slabs because we were planning to buy some! The builders must have stuck them down before dumping the sand. I've moved the edging slabs to the back to surround one of the new beds and I dug the last of my bought compost into the new bed and planted rosemary and sage seeds and some artichoke seeds which I will let flower if they can grow in this poor soil / poor light combination.
In case any of them do work, the rosemary and Imperial star are on the left, the sage and purple globe are on the right.

So now I'm tired, a little sunburned and pretty satisfied with my day :)

butterfly

2012-05-20T02:08:00.001-07:00

I saw my first butterfly of the year today.

Not my photo - taken from here

I think it will be a nice day :)

Compost worries

2012-05-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

I didn't spend much time in the garden today, just an hour pottering around the edges after coming home from the park.

I got myself all worried about the compost bin. It is hoaching with slugs and ants and I can't really turn it any more because of the massive potato plant growing at the bottom (the tubers are everywhere and are holding it all together). Luckily google knows everything:

Slugs are a good thing - they eat all the stuff I put in there (obviously) and tend not to venture out of their warm, predator free home looking for food when it is all provided for them.

For the unexpected potatoes, apparently I can pull them up and eat them if they look ok, or try to get them out and plant them in a pot. Or leave them if I feel lazy. I'll have a go at getting them out tomorrow.

Despite chucking buckets of water into the compost bin and (trying to) turn it more frequently the ants are undeterred. More googling suggests that they will probably eat seeds and aerate the compost (reducing the need for turning?) which are good things.

I might look in the pound shops tomorrow for some slug barriers to encircle the compost bin just in case.

Other than worrying about the compost bin (and itching incessantly ever since I saw all those ants) I did a little weeding and thinned the swede plants. I've also put the squash and asparagus out to harden off.

Some photos to prove I did go outside today.

Lettuce I planted on the 24th March

The Hibiscus I bought last week

The rabbit who eats everything

The strawberries I bought last week

The first sunflower. Planted on the 6th Feb

Lettuce planted on 3rd May

Global market day

2012-05-19T03:53:00.000-07:00

The global market was in town last weekend so we bought some new plants for the garden. I got a big basket of Strawberries, a Hibiscus and a Fuschia. The Hibiscus and Fuschia will fill in some gaps in the flower bed and the Strawberry basket is to replace the strawberries that I had growing on the ground before the rabbit ate them all up.

I got almost nothing done in the garden other than planting my purchases and pulling up a few weeds. On Sunday it rained so heavily I didn't go outside once and then I went away for work for a few days.

Things are really starting to happen in the garden, here are some photos I took last weekend. (I'll do a post for this weekend later).

Purple sprouting broccoli - beautiful colours

The cherry tree has set fruit

My first sunflower is nearly here

A nice afternoon

2012-05-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

I left work (almost) on time this afternoon because the sun was shining and it was too nice to work. I made the most of my hour in the garden by planting the three raspberry canes I bought in the sale and all of the flower seeds.
One of the raspberries looked good but the other two looked near death so I am not optimistic. All of the flowers wanted to be planted in a nursery bed then moved on later. I'm much too lazy for that so I've gone with my typical method of chucking the seeds everywhere and watering them a bit.
I also planted some more peas and lettuce in some pots outside and did a little weeding.

What I have learned so far

2012-05-02T11:22:00.001-07:00

So I'm 1/4 of the way through the year and I have already learned some important lessons.

1. don't put dandelions in the compost bin
2. protect tasty plants from the rabbit
3. growing cauliflower, broccoli and swede outside is easier than growing them indoors (since God takes care of the watering and daylight)

Cauliflower

Swede

3. I should be more careful about how many seeds I plant, I have twice what I need of some seedlings.
4. However, sometimes things just don't work out and I have to try again.
5. Flowers make me happy, I should plant more.
6. I can get almost anything I need on sale or in the pound shop

One of the Tulips I planted in December

Compost fail?

2012-05-01T13:35:00.002-07:00

So the compost bin is full and it looks like there is lots of actual compost in the bottom (I know this is silly but it feels like I did magic or alchemy or something!) There is also a very recognisable potato plant growing out of the door at the bottom, what I think is an ant colony and a couple of dandelions growing out of the top.

A potato leaf escaping from the compost bin

I don't mind the potatoes growing there, that really is free food.
I couldn't really care less about the ants although I'm pouring some water in there more often (I leave a bucket next to the bin to catch the rain) because apparently the ants suggest the compost might be a bit dry and I think I would like them to move on before barbecue season.

I'm a bit less impressed by the dandelions. I may have thrown some (about 100) dandelions in there without really thinking it through. Next year I'll put the dandelions in the council compost bin instead - and I'll probably have a field of dandelions instead of garden.

Maybe I'll learn to love them, they're kind of cheerful, need no work and can apparently be eaten.

Some photos

2012-04-24T12:19:00.003-07:00

There has only been about 10 minutes today when it hasn't been raining so I went outside to have a look at the garden and take some photos.

purple sprouting broccoli

mangetout

potatoes

It's starting to look good! My camomile and lettuce seeds are doing well and my tomato plants are still alive. The sweetcorn I planted out have been mostly eaten by the rabbit but I hope they may recover. Indoors the tomatoes in my porch are getting really big and my squash plants are starting to outgrow their paper pots.

Quick update

2012-04-22T05:10:00.002-07:00

Cauliflower

Just a quick post today, I've not gotten out in the garden all weekend except for 10 minutes to turn the compost heap and put out bread for the birds. The cauliflower and swede I planted on the 9th have started to sprout but none of the other seeds are up yet. The weather has been strange (glorious warm sunshine for half an hour followed by hailstones) so I am prepared to start again if nothing happens in the next couple of weeks.

I had a walk into town this morning and bought some flower seeds in wilkinsons, while I was there I got three raspberry canes for £1.50! I have had a run of failures with raspberries so I am not hopeful of success this time but I will plant them and see what happens.

Hungry animals

2012-04-12T12:23:00.001-07:00

On Monday I got lots done in the garden. I planted all of the outdoor seeds except the lettuce and herbs (I can't decide where I want them). I didn't put the artichoke in pots, I just put them directly in the ground. I wasn't too controlled about sowing the seeds, I pretty much just spread the seeds around on raked ground. We shall see what happens.

I transplanted the butternut squash to paper pots, five of them look ok and had lots of roots, one looks a little pathetic but I figure five will probably be too many anyway.

Continuing my plague of animals eating my plants I caught a blackbird eating lily bulbs out of a pot tonight. It actually dug them up! Although I've lost two bulbs (and now have earth all over my patio) it was really interesting watching the bird dig them out. I also caught a slug on one of my broccoli leaves, I pulled it off and hoped that a bird would eat it. I need to find a way to kill the slugs that doesn't make me want to throw up.

There is more frost forecast tonight so I brought my pots in to keep warm in the kitchen overnight.

Seeds to plant this month

2012-04-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

If I don't write things down they don't happen (hence the existence of this whole blog). I'm taking a week off work so I'm going to plant my next batch of seeds and do some pottering around in the garden if the weather dries up at all.

Seeds to plant:
(indoors in paper pots)
9* brocolli
more asparagus

(Outdoors in ground)
Cauliflower
More sunflowers
More onion sets
Celeriac
peas
lettuce / herbs

(Outdoors in pots)
Imperial star artichoke

Yesterday I repotted nine leek and three celeriac seedlings (unfortunately, I forgot to label them so I shall have to wait till they get bigger to know which is which). I need to repot the butternut squash and I need to decide what to do with my artichoke seedlings as they are trying to escape from their paper pots.

Taking stock

2012-04-08T04:28:00.003-07:00

I had a quick walk round the garden this morning. The past week's frost and rabbit carnage have left me with five fewer Tomato plants (the ones in the upside down planters and ones in a large pot are all dead from the cold. I had covered them but they would still have been quite exposed), six less Sunflowers and a sorry looking lump of Kiwi vine.

In the win column I can see that the turnip seeds I planted outside (to replace the ones I killed by planting out too early during the good weather) have sprouted.

The lettuce and camomile seeds I scattered around the tomatoes two weekends ago have also started to sprout which is nice. Most of my potatoes are up now and I can see lots of growth in the garlic and onion beds. Some of the onions have failed so I'll replant as soon as I get a few hours of dry weather.

Indoors there has been a lot of growth. The seeds I planted four weeks ago are looking really good. I got about a 50% success on the seeds I planted and the Artichokes, Asparagus and Butternut Squash are coming on well. I'm going to plant some more this week.
About a month ago I planted some left over lettuce (last years seeds) and it is ready to eat at last. I'm going to have some in my sandwich today. This will be the first food I've grown and eaten this year other than the herbs.

Butternut Squash

Asparagus

Artichoke

Yummy lettuce