Pretty Productive Little Garden

2010-07-06T08:09:00.000+01:00

The lavender hedge is at it's peak now and the bees are busy collecting nectar from it. The hedge is getting on a bit and I have started to take cuttings to replace it but it thrived on a hard prune in the spring. Nearby the scabious that I put in last year are coming into flower too.

The front garden has a lot of shrubs which do a grand job of dampening the noise from the road. The shrubs have got a bit overgrown and I am starting to cut back some of the biggest thugs - one bin-full at a time! But at the moment they are glorious in their abundance and I could stand at look at the symphony of green for hours.
The strawberries have been fantastic this year but are coming to an end now and the courgettes are just beginning to crop regularly. That's the good news! The bad news is that most of the veggies have been decimated by pigeons. The tops have been removed from bean seedlings, beetroot leaves have been pecked until nothing remains except upright purple leaf veins and they have even pecked off the carrot tops. The only thing they don't seem to like are turnips. So I have had to start again with the beans and beetroot. They are all at their most vulnerable stage at the moment and so I have been rigging up what protection and bird scaring devises that I can - hence the bottle tops hanging from canes etc. It looks like our beans will be late this year.

2010-06-15T07:55:00.001+01:00

We are gorging ourselves on strawberries at present while the bees and beetles are gorging themselves on the ceanothus which is in full flower. Sitting close by it sounds much like being at an African football match!
Yesterday I picked the first courgette.. and some of the last of the broad beans. There are a few small pods on the plants so we may get one more taste although a couple of the pods I picked yesterday had no beans inside.

2010-06-12T08:55:00.000+01:00

Only one of the runner beans that I planted a few weeks ago has come up. So I decided to buy some more. Julian Graves and Robert Dyas didn't have any. I didn't try Wilkinson as I don't need anything so bad as to face their queues. As usual dear old Boones down the High Street came to my rescue. Not only did they have runners but I had the choice of 4 varieties (I chose Polestar)!

I also bought some parsnips to try. I will have to find some space for them in the next couple of days or so as it's getting a bit late to put them in.

2010-06-10T08:27:00.001+01:00

The Oriental Poppies are at there best now and the paeonies are just coming into flower. Although they are later this year they seem to be having a good one as there are lots of buds on each plant. I have 3 fragrant varieties. The fragrance is heavenly, what I would describe as old fashioned rose. The white one at the front has very slender stems for the size of the flowers and I have removed several that were knocked to the ground during the recent downpours. They are now in a vase in the yoga room where we can enjoy them.

The roses are in bloom and they too have a good number of flowers. I catch their scent when I go up the back steps or hang out the washing.

Yesterday I cleared out one of the big pots and planted a courgette in it. I already have one courgette in a pot, planted out about a month ago, and small fruits are developing on it already. The pot had had some chives growing in it. They had increased in girth dramatically and it was quite hard to get them out. I split the clump and planted up two pieces in pots which I have plaed either end of the trough in which I've put some carrot seed. The idea being that their smell will confuse carrot root fly. The trough is also up on the retaining wall to further try and outwit the fly which flies close to the ground (where the carrots normally are). The chive flowers are a real bee magnet. There seem to be a lot of mason bees around in our garden at the moment. They are always welcome.

I have a couple more courgette seedlings which I started off a couple of weeks ago. They will be put in the ground when the broad beans are finished.

Having planted up the courgette I just had enough compost left to fill a squat pot in which I planted some kenyan beans. The pot is up on the back terrace this year, for the first time, so we'll see how they do up there.

2010-06-08T22:32:00.000+01:00

I haven't forgotten this blog - I've just been rather busy lately.

Among other things I have been learning XHTML & CSS to create a website for Mark's new aikido club - Wellsprings Aikido. Check out the results of my efforts. XHTML & CSS itself haven't been too difficult to pick up but IE's interpretation of standards, it's little foibles and catering for IE6 & 7 as well as IE8 has driven me to distraction! It will never be finished and I will never be satisfied of course but I'm happy with it as it is at the moment. I now intend to rewrite our yoga websites (www.yogawithanne.co.uk & www.yogawithmark.co.uk) to get away from using Publisher - another MS product with limitations and foibles! I will probably start with Mark's site, as it is much smaller, while I work out what to do with some of the material on mine.

I have also got a bit disheartened by this blog regularly being targeted by 'comments' in chinese each kanji of which is a link to a porn site! I am moderating all comments and so simply delete them. I guess they are using some sort of automated system and so I will be targeted until the end of time.

This last week I have started to harvest broad beans and strawberries. Delicious. I never liked broad beans until I grew them myself and I still don't if they are not young and straight from my garden. I'm not sure how I came to grow them in the first place since I didn't like them. But picked before the beans get big and that tough outer skin they are superb.

We have two varieties of strawberries fruiting. One is producing smaller, firmer fruit and the other big juicy fruits with fantastic flavour. Fortunately woodlice seem to be concentrating their attack on the first variety and not the second. I hope that they don't read this blog!

The kenyan beans are showing now but no sign of the runners. I think that I will try and get hold of some more beans this week and start again. Last week I bought some plugs of leeks and popped them in. I've never tried growing leeks before so fingers crossed.

2010-03-06T09:15:00.000+00:00

Finally, Spring feels as though it is on the way. Our drive runs east west which means that the back of the house only gets the sun in the summer. The morning sun is now just beginning to creep around the corner, a phenomenon that always raises my spirits.
Yesterday I got out and finished cutting back the lavender hedge and cut off last years flowering stems on the hydrangeas, sedums, scabious and a few other alpines. There is still plenty more tidying up to do! I am hoping for a dry spell to dry out the soil a little so that I can get out and do some weeding soon.

2010-02-13T08:36:00.000+00:00

Well, the resolution didn't last too long. A bitterly cold wind and having a tooth pulled (it didn't go without quite a fight) put paid to spending a short time in the garden each day! But I'm raring to go and in anticipation I have been looking at the seed catalogues and thinking about what to put in this year.

2010-02-07T09:03:00.000+00:00

Feeling pleased with myself as I managed to spend another hour or so in the garden yesterday morning. Still hacking my way through the lavender. (The wheelie bin smells delightful!) Yesterday, I reached the part that is being swamped by a plant which was originally put in to trail over the retaining wall but which has gone everywhere but! It was pretty tough going. Because the vine has rooted everywhere it is going to be impossible to eradicate it easily but am aiming to keep it under stricter control this year.

2010-02-06T10:21:00.000+00:00

Yesterday was glorious. The ideal sort of day to get out into the garden. The ground was very wet but fortunately there is still plenty to be getting on with within reach of the path. I spent 45 minutes or so cutting back the lavender along the drive. I've cut it back very hard. So far I've completed about a third of the length of the hedge - it's quite tough on the cutting hand.
Back in the autumn I took some cuttings in preparation for replacing the plants because they have become quite woody. I don't know how many of the cuttings took. I'm going to leave them another couple of months before I start disturbing them to look for signs of roots. It looks like some of the cuttings have been lost by digging of neighbourhood moggies. I will need to take some more cuttings in the late summer and begin to replant the hedge next year.
Miraculously the snowdrops that I planted (in the green) around this time last year have survived and are now in flower. It lifts the spirit to see them. I say miraculously because they have been pulled up, dug up etc by mistake a number of times over the summer.

2010-01-29T08:57:00.001+00:00

What is it that tempts porn sites to try and put links and back links into this blog? I've just rejected another one! Perhaps because there have been no entries for a while they think it's an untended garden. Well they are wrong. I've just been hibernating because it's been too cold, frozen or wet to get outside. The garden is looking very sad and when we had a dry day a couple of days ago I thought that it was time to resurrect the 30 mins a day in the garden routine but a bitterly cold wind put me off that idea pretty quickly. Instead I stay in the warm and plan for the months ahead.
A few weeks ago I chased Marshall's to find out why the clumping raspberry hadn't been delivered at the end of last year. I was told it will come next month so I will need to get out soon to prepare a space for it. Fortunately the broad beans seem to have managed to survive both the big freeze and the digging of neighbourhood cats. Likewise the onions.

Originally posted 29th November

2010-01-08T07:56:00.000+00:00

I have been unable to delete or disable the backlink to the porn website that was put in the comment to the post on 29th November so I have deleted the post altogether. Here is the original text.

What weather! We have escaped with only minor damage - a few missing tiles on the roof, some smashed pots, broken fence panels and a garden light smashed when the bench was blown onto it.

The garden is looking rather soggy and sorry for itself at the moment and there is not much to report except for progress on the onions and broad beans I planted a few weeks ago. The onions have some healthy looking sprouts and the beans are just beginning to show through.

2010-01-07T15:17:00.000+00:00

The comment to the previous post has been deleted because it was in Chinese and had a link to a girlie porn site. I will be moderating comments from now on (on all my blogs) and will not allow any that are unwholesome or are promoting websites that I would not wish to be associated with. You have been warned!

2009-11-09T07:52:00.000+00:00

Over the past week I cleared a part of the vegetable patch and put in some onion sets, garlic and broad beans. I had bought the onion sets from Marshalls and they arived a month or so ago in a net bag inside a padded envelop. I had opened the packet but left the sets inside it. The envelop had resealed itself so when I opened it some of the sets had rotted and many were already sprouting. I think that I got to them in the nick of time! We don't have a lot of space so I planted them about 6 inches apart in short rows.

I didn't buy new garlic this year. Instead I split up one of the largest bulbs that I lifted at the end of the summer into individual cloves and planted them.

The broad beans are the variety Aquadulce Claudia which are for autumn planting. I have put in a double row planting the beans 8 inches apart in two rows 12 inches apart.

And I finished clearing out the drainage grills around the garage. I know that there are still a lot of leaves on the trees to come down but our worst time for fallen leaves is late March when the beech hedge suddenly looses all of it's leaves in a week or two.

2009-11-03T09:11:00.000+00:00

When weather permits I have been getting on with some of the seasonal tasks in the garden. The wind chime has been brought in, washed and the wood given a feed of lemon oil. The fountain on the patio has been drained, the pump removed, cleaned and put away and the unit covered with plastic to give it a bit of protection from the worst of the winter weather. I have made a start on clearing out the drainage grill that runs around the garage and across the drive.

The orange chrysanth that looked so fantastic just a few weeks ago is looking sorry for itself. The flowers had finished and were beginning to rot on the plant so I cut them all off. Then the strong winds that we had on Saturday night blew the pot over smashing it. The poor thing is now temporarily propped up in a large flower pot until I can repot it properly.

In September I started to feed the birds again to help them put on weight for the winter and so that they know where to find food in bad weather. There is a robin that puts in an appearance whenever any turning over of soil is going on. Mark was doing some weeding earlier in the week and caught this picture of the little fellow. You wonder how those tiny legs can hold him up!

2009-10-24T08:39:00.001+01:00

Well, it's been pretty wet here for the last few days so I've not been able to get out to do much in the garden. Before the rain arrived I had got started on some tidying up jobs. Until the garage was built a few years ago we had a large oak barrel in which we collected rainwater from the roof. Since the garage has been built there is not enough room for it by the downpipe. It has been sat on the path ever since, occasionally with a container with flowers in it placed on the top to cheer the corner up. I noticed that the top was looking a bit rotten so I had the idea of taking out the top and letting the rainwater collect in it and then getting the water out by dipping the watering can in. I took a sledgehammer to the top and it came out quite easily. Having removed the top I could see quite alot of daylight through the gaps - more than would be closed by the wood swelling when it had water in it. So I decided to demolish the whole thing. My first thought was to give the wood to a friend for their wood burner but then Mark reminded me that Bonfire night is coming so we're saving it for then. The barrel was originally an old whiskey barrel so I'm hoping that an essence of that will remain and that the wood will burn fragrantly!

Mark's sister has given us two small standard olive trees. We haven't decided on the final position of them yet but at the moment they are either side of the path onto the patio. I will have to get some fleece to wrap around them and the pots to protect them from frost. We have a large standard olive in a half barrel just outside the back door. It gets some sun in the summer (at midsummer the drive which is aligned E/W gets the sun all day) but not enough most of the time. The arrival of the new plants has been the spur to do something about moving it to somewhere where it can get more sun. The only place we can really put it where it will get more light is up on the back terrace. This involves making space and moving the immoveable plant and container! There was a climbing rose on the back wall. It had attractive flowers but was very prone to blackspot and only bore flowers high up. So I have whipped that out and tidied up the bed it was in. The plan is to put the olive tree in front of this little bed. I will manure the soil before next summer and then decide what to plant around the olive. We have yet to actually move the olive. Rain stopped play. It is at least a one man + one woman job. We are going to have to get the tree out of the barrel and move barrel and tree separately. Not a job I am relishing!

I picked some baby spinach the other day. As it isn't growing quickly and there are no sign of the replacement carrot seeds coming up in the little trough I decided that it was too late to sow more spinach in the half barrel that the kenyan beans had been growing in. I put in some hyacinth bulbs instead. We can feed our sense of smell and sight rather than our bellies!

2009-10-11T21:30:00.000+01:00

Well, the heavy rain at the end of last week finally did for the tomatoes remaining on plants outside. It was a double whammy. The extra water caused some fruits to split and the dampness brought out myriads of slugs and snails which gorged on them. So I rescued what I could and brought them in to finish ripening on the window sill or, if they were ripe and split, to cook them straight away.

So that's the end of the tomatoes. The kenyan beans are also finished. I have left the roots in the half barrel and am going to fork in some chicken manure pellets and try sowing some more spinach. I hope to do that in the next few days while the weather is fairly good. The runner beans are really over too and most of them I have taken down but two or three plants still had some baby beans which I couldn't bear to cut down. So now all we have left in the garden that's edible at the moment are the carrots in pots; the baby spinach (also in a pot) which is just about ready to pick the first few leaves and the courgettes in the ground which aren't doing much at present.

I have put in a few cauliflowers to overwinter. The one's I put in earlier in the year grew well but got attacked by beasties, pitted by the weather and I didn't get the hang of turning over the leaves to prevent discolouring (they kept popping open again) and apart from a couple most of the curds were inedible. I am hoping for better things this time around!

I mentioned previously that the carrots in one of the troughs had been chomped away. There were also some self-sown tagetes in the trough which were eaten and suprisingly they have shown signs of recovery. Not much sign of the carrots recovering though so I have sown more in the same trough.

The rain also did for the gorgeous chrysanth in the pot. The dahlias seemed to stand up to the weather better but I think they could do with further tying up.

2009-10-05T10:04:00.000+01:00

Along the retaining wall we have a lavender hedge. Usually at this time of year I remove the dead flower heads and then February/March time I cut back the plants quite hard. The plants have been there several years now and are getting quite woody so it's time to replace them. I have taken a load of cuttings from the existing plants and pushed them into a space in the garden. It's a little bit late for the cuttings but as we're on the south coast and it's quite mild I am hoping that enough of them want to root to enable me to replace the plants we currently have.

It's a tidying up the garden time of year. As some space has appeared with the end of the runner bean's and turnips I have been able to reposition my compost bins. For many years we had a couple of wooden slatted bins but when they rotted beyond use I aquired a plastic bin. I now have two of these and I have to say that I don't find them as good as the wooden ones. It is nearly impossible to turn the material in the bin. I've tried using a fork but you end up with bruised fingers. I recently bought a plastic contraption that you push into the compost to aerate it but I'm not impressed with that either. I also find that it is not very easy to get the compost out of the little access hole at the bottom. Hence the need to reposition the bins. I have now positioned them so that the access holes face directly out on to the vegetable plot to see if that works better. It does mean however that I will not be able to get compost out during peak growing time.

As I was in a tidying up mood I finally got around to dealing with the two remaining bags that I had been growing potatoes in earlier in the year. A couple of months ago the plants were begining to show signs of blight and so I removed all the foliage and destroyed it. As I didn't empty the compost soon after I was expecting that any tubers would have rotted away. So when I slit open the first of the bags I was delighted and suprised when beautiful, clean tubers emerged. The second bag had a fewer tubers but enough for a feed which was more than I had expected. Interestingly the bag with the smaller yield contained more soil based compost than the first but that may just be a coincidence.

I am pulling young carrots from the pots. They are really tasty and just need a rinse off before popping them into the pot. A few have a tiny bit of carrot fly damage. I think that the flies must have got in the last time that I thinned out.

I have planted some hyacinth bulbs in bowls for the house in the winter. I love their fragrance. I have placed the bowls in the dark in the garage and will check on them from time to time.

2009-09-30T14:05:00.000+01:00

Autumn has arrived and although the summer is over it's a lovely time of year. In fact, I enjoy having seaons. I don't think I could live somewhere without them! On fine days the bees are very busy in the autumn sunshine visiting the scabious and sedum flowers. As ever there is much to do in the garden - mostly to do with tidying up. Mark has given the box hedge it's annual trim and tidied up the beech hedge for the winter. Although the beech leaves die the plants retain the leaves on the young growth throughout the winter so now is not the time to cut back hard. We'll do that next year where it's needed.

The runner beans have almost come to an end and I have taken down one large wigwam. The roots fix nitrogen so I have left the roots in the soil and put the above ground material in the compost bin. There are still some Kenyan beans but they too are nearly finished. The courgettes are virtually exhausted but I am still picking one or two a couple of times a week. I'll leave the plants for a little longer yet. I still have 3 tomato plants with fruit. And the tomatoes picked from the diseased plants have been ripening well on the window sills. So it hasn't been a total disaster on the tomato front this year. In fact I have been pleased with the crop considering how dire it looked earlier in the summer.

Every trace of green in one of the troughs with carrot seedlings has been chomped away by some creature. I'm waiting a few days to see if the seedlings recover if not I will sow a few more. The spinach seedlings are growing well but not yet big enough to harvest. I am thinking of putting some more in the large half barrel when the kenyan beans come out.

One of the highlights in the garden at the moment is a glorious chrysanthemum. I bought it a couple of years ago whereupon it immediately went into decline. Last year it didn't do much so this spring I replanted it together with a good dose of slow realease fertiliser. I have made sure that it didn't dry out during the summer and all that care has been rewarded with a magnificant display which cheers every time you come through the gate.

2009-09-16T17:34:00.000+01:00

Well, perseverance has paid off - our first tomato! Here is a picture of it. The variety is tumbler. Mark and I ate half each. The flavour was good but the skin was a bit tough. Speaking with other friends who have had a tomato harvest this year that seems to be a common problem. Still we have tomatoes! I said previously that the Tumbler plants seem to be more robust against the blight. Typically we lost one of the Tumblers soon after. I have 5 plants left, 3 Red Alert and 2 Tumbler, Mostly they are now leafless because I am cutting off anything at the first sign of blight. I am removing the trusses from the plants that have developed blight on their stems and they are ripening well on a sunny windowsill. We have been eating the tomatoes cooked, either grilled or baked with a little olive oil and a pinch of salt, and the flavour of both varieties is superb.

The carrots seeds that I sowed in the troughs are now showing through. We got some more compost and I sowed a couple more rows in the third trough. I also put some spinach, variety Campania from Marshalls, in one of the large pots (after replaceing the top few inches of compost). These seeds are large and a jade colour so very easy to see and sprinkle thinly on the compost. They have already come through. There are sufficient seeds in the packet for several sowings. The packet says to sow February - September. I maybe able to get another sowing in this year otherwise I will wait to early next year.

There were some sage plants in the garden, one purple and two green, that had got very woody. I decided it was time to get rid of them and start again. I have taken some cuttings (3" heel cuttings) and there were a few stems which had rooted which I potted up. So we will have some new plants for the garden and to give to friends who have asked for some. I don't use the sage for cooking so much as for making sage tea when colds and sore throats strike. I hope the colds hold off long enough for the plants to grow big enough to pick leaves from! The plants have to be replaced every few years (i had left it a bit too long this time). In future I will replace them one at a time so that we always have a decent sized plant available.

We have had a couple of pots planted with pinks either side of the front door over the summer. The flowers are coming to an end now and so last week I bought a dozen pansies in the Farmers Market in Poole which I am going to pot up to take their place. I have put a few of the pansies in one of the Ali Baba pots on the patio. The pot has quite a deep rim but one of the flowers has now popped it's head up above the rim. I see a lovely big purple flower every time I open the back door... and I have to smile.

2009-09-04T13:11:00.000+01:00

The carrots growing in pots are the size of my little finger and so further thining out was required this week giving us more yummy baby carrots to eat! The carrots are now spaced approximately a couple of inches apart and won't need any further thinning. We just need to be a little patient and wait for them to grow a bit bigger before pulling them to eat. I had a photo for you but blogger doesn't seem to want to let me add any images today.

The Kenyan beans that were growing in the little plastic troughs have now finished. The plants have been put in the compost bin and the compost that they were growing in spread on the garden. I have planted some carrot seed in a couple of the troughs and will do so in the third when I get some more compost. As the troughs aren't that deep I have planted the spherical variety Lisa from Marshall's which is particularly suitable for pots.

The garden has been looking very thirsty, particularly the hydrangeas and runner beans, so the rain a couple of days ago was very welcome. Not so the fierce winds which have beaten everything down and blown over pots and parasol (not quite sure why I put this out as it's hardly been used all summer!). I am still persevering with the tomato plants, cutting off any sign of blight and sacrificing some trusses in the hope of saving others. This has meant that the plants are a little top heavy and/or unbalanced and so the poor plants have been blown over several times in spite of me putting bricks on the pots. I grew two varieties this year. Red Alert and the patio variety Tumbler. At the risk of tempting fate Tumbler seems to have been the more robust of the two in resisting the blight. I have had to remove some plant material but nowhere near as much as for the Red Alert plants.

All the onion have been lifted now. We have enough onions and large shallots to last us a good few months. I planted the sets in various places around the garden and it has been interesting to see the difference in the resulting onions. Those growing between strawberries next to the path in full sun have grown quite large while those just a few yards away but which are shaded for part of the day are much smaller. In fact a couple of them haven't increased in girth at all and are the same size as when I put them in.

The annual scabious are a delight with white, purple and pinky mauve flowers. The dahlias have been great as well. The flowers are not so large now and the colours not so vibrant but beautiful all the same. We have yellow Graham Thomas roses outside the back door. They are having a final flourish and are a joy to see when you step outside.

A working kitchen garden

2009-08-31T12:44:00.000+01:00

Last Saturday we went to Brockwood Park in Bramdean, Hants and visited a fantastic working kitchen garden in the grounds of the school. The garden is 1 1/2 acres and is tended by two gardeners aided by volunteers. It provides produce to The Krishnamurti Centre as well as to Brockwood Park School and produces an amazing 1/3 of the school's veggie requirements. Everything I saw looked very healthy and well tended.

There are 3 huge glass houses and they were filled with rows of cucumbers, melons, salad stuff and tomatoes. I didn't go into the glass house with the tomatoes but from the door they all looked very healthy and blight free. The plants were at the far end of the house away from the entrance so maybe this has helped prevent them being affected.

The garden was very inspiring but, because of the difference in scale (the area growing courgettes alone was probably bigger than the whole of our garden), I didn't spot anything that I can apply to our own little plot. Maybe when we get our allotment in another 10 years time. Yes, the waiting list for an allotment in Poole is currently over 10 years!

The garden is part of the school so obviously you can't go wandering around willy nilly but the school does have open days and I'm sure that if you visited the Krishnamurti Centre it would be possible to arrange to be shown the garden by one of the staff or volunteers.

Full report of our visit to Brockwood.

Garden News

2009-08-17T12:27:00.000+01:00

In the garden the sweetpeas are now exhausted but the annual scabious are beginning to flower. I love these flowers. I was going to say that they are one of my favourites but I have so many favourites that the term almost has no meaning. Apart from the things that I wouldn't or couldn't grow because they are unsuitable for our little garden the only plant that I wouldn't have in the garden because I don't like it is the lupin - too big and blousy. The scabious flowers are white with a hint of green and quite beautiful. I have been unable to get a satisfactory photo because viewed against the dark of the plants around them the camera seems to think that they are a light source or something and won't focus on them. I am not enough of a camera woman to know how to get around this with my little point and click automatic.

I am now picking runner beans. The kenyan beans in the troughs have been very prolific and are still going strong. Those that I planted in the half barrel and squat pot are just about to flower so we should have beans for some time to come. Other garden highlights include:

The decorative Dahlia 'Explosion' with it's large, double yellow and flame coloured flowers is magnificent at the moment. My father always grew giant golden coloured decorative dahlias which he overwintered in boxes in the shed each year. I am hoping that the plants continue to flower into the autumn. I would like to have some for samhain when I build a little altar to honour the dead who have been an influence on my life.

In the pond the Pickerel Weed (Pontederia cordata) is flowering well this year. I might have to remove some this year or next to prevent it taking over completely.

Both the white and blue Hibiscus are flowering profusely and the pineapple lilies are blooming. I have had a pot of Pineapple Lilies on the patio for a few years now. Over time they have increased so that the pot had become overcrowded. Earlier this year I re potted the bulbs keeping a couple of pots for ourselves and giving a couple of pots away. We've not had so many flowers this year as not all the bulbs have flowered but I expect a better display next year.

The hardy fuchsia plants that I planted under the front window have flowered better than I expected.

Over the weekend I put in my seed order for autumn sowings: broad bean aquadulce and turnip tiny pal for the ground, spinach campania and carrot nanco for the large pots and the round carrot early French frame 4 Lisa for the troughs. I have also ordered some onion sets and the raspberry Glencoe. I've ordered Glencoe, in spite of its purple fruit not because of it, because it is a clump-forming Floricane - I don't have the space for regular canes.

Cake

2009-08-14T21:14:00.000+01:00

The anticipated courgette glut has yet to materialise. I seem to be keeping up with all that the plants produce. As a result I had to save up a couple of days harvest to get the 1lb required to make the Chocolate Courgette Cake in the Five-a-day Fruit and Vegetable Cookbook . The cake is a tray bake and the recipe was easy to follow. It makes a very moist cake which went down very well with my afternoon decaf. I'm not sure how to describe the flavour. You can taste the chocolate and the allspice and you can also taste the courgette but it's flavour is not so obvious. I had to eat some courgette by itself tonight just to be sure I wasn't imagining it! The whole thing has a wholesome sort of taste and I will definitely make it again. Alarmingly the recipe states it serves four to six. Maybe six navvies or growing teenagers! I cut mine into 16 portions and find 1 is quite enough. By the way the recipe is virtually identical to that for Chocolate Zucchini Cake given in What Will I Do with All Those Courgettes?. The latter uses sour cream or yogurt in place of the milk.

If you would like to know a little more about the Five-a-day Fruit and Vegetable Cookbook then read on. The book, which runs to a little over 500 pages, begins by explaining the size of a portion and how many times you can count it a day. For example spuds don't count towards your five-a-day and no matter how much fruit juice you drink a day it only counts as 1 portion. The same goes for dried fruits. The fruits and veggies are then presented in groups (stone fruits, berries and currants, squashes etc). Each fruit (or veg.) in the group is described and information is given about its nutritional value and how to buy, store, prepare and cook it. This is followed by recipes incorporating the various fruits (or veggies!) from the group. It is sumptuously illustrated with photographs throughout.

First cauli

2009-08-10T12:14:00.000+01:00

My First Cauliflower! I tried to grow cauliflowers, unsuccessfully, a few years back. I had another go this year. I read that they like hard ground so I planted them in an area that hadn't been dug over. It was so hard it was difficult to dig a hole to plant them! They seem to have liked it though. They are in a bit of a poorly accessible part of my veggie plot next to the hedge so they haven't had much attention. And I haven't yet quite got the hang of covering them with their leaves to prevent rain damage and keep the curds white but even so I think they're pretty impressive.

No use spraying tomatoes

2009-08-06T10:31:00.000+01:00

After further investigation I have decided spraying will be of little use even on the unaffected plants as it's washed off by rain and won't protect new, unsprayed growth. If you're interested check out this interesting discussion on use of Dithane etc. I like the plastic rigged up to protect the plants from rain but still get water to the roots! For now it seems the best I can do is remove infected leaves to slow down the spread to the fruit. Unfortunately my fruit is still small and so it may not be enough to get a crop. Until I can give plants some protection I won't be growing tomatoes again. :-(