Garden Blogs

Saturday, 8 August 2009

Rain & Cherry Plums

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain….. Well, that’s July over with then! Absolute slug heaven in the veg plot, have been out daily cutting the little beggers in half with scissors (beardy weirdy v upset until was able to convince him was NOT using kitchen scissors!) But still they come….. On the plus side, have had a bumper crop of cherry plums this year. Hubby spent (the only) dry afternoon picking them all, ending up with 4 bucket loads! Have made cherry plum & walnut chutney, also cherry plum compote, but this very sweet & am now not sure about it at all Which is a bit of a bummer as I was going to give it to family as part of their Christmas presents as it is such a beautiful red colour. Will give it another taste when I am not quite so totally fed up with cherry plums…. Apart from CP’s, am currently picking leaf beet, courgettes, runner beans & French beans every other day, which is just enough for the two of us. Am mega impressed with squashes, which we are growing for the first time this year, 2 different varieties, one a lovely dark green with a lighter green stripe which I think is Burgess Buttercup, & one a beautiful mellow yellow which I think is Uchiki Kuri - that is I know that they’ve got to be one or the other but as usual I got the labels mixed up! The yellow ones are just the most funny things I’ve seen , it’s like growing boobs in the garden!! The yellow courgettes that I grew from seed are not doing as well as the green one that I bought off a chap at a boot sale, which is a bit of a disappointment. & the toms are doing OK, still a long way from ripe, but it is starting to be clear that F1 hybrids definitely give a better yield than the heritage varieties so far. Will have to give that a bit of thought for next year. My heart is with the heritage, but my head is saying stick with the hybrids if I want to get the most out of the space we’ve got. However, one successful comparison is between the beds that I mulched heavily with our own home made compost & those I didn’t - the growth rate in the composted beds are markedly more impressive. A last word on the carrots - complete failure! I think I’ve got one plant left & I’m just blanking it frankly!

Monday, 29 June 2009

Hols and back...

Hello again! Just back from super camping holiday at the Lizard in Cornwall - glorious weather, lots of walking, eating & drinking, definitely the life! Lots of spying on other peoples’ veg patches as well, starting to become a bit obsessed I think! Anyway, back to the real world (ahhhhh!!!!!!) - but back in the garden & it’s a wonder what a week can do! Everything has grown - that includes the bindweed unfortunately, & doesn’t include those pesky carrots, whose numbers are now down to twelve, which is about a weeks supply at the rate we eat them! But the toms are coming on nicely, the beans are well up their poles & the squashes have got baby squashes - I am very, very excited! Weather was nice enough on Saturday night to continue our outdoor eating theme, so we barbequed some steaks on the fire pit. We made the firepit ourselves out of some old night storage heater bricks, upended in a vague circle, surrounded them with rockery stone & have decorated them with shells that we’ve picked up on our travels to make it look pretty. The grill is made out of an old oven shelf, with an old microwave trivet wired to it. & it works! & it’s also portable - if we get bored of it where it is we just dismantle it & reassemble it somewhere else… I spent Sunday chilling - have planted out a few more purple sprouting broccoli, chatted to the leeks (still some way off the “pencil thickness” they need to achieve before I plant them out - I think I’ll pop them where the carrots were!) A few strawberries had ripened while we were away, & also the gooseberries on our one & only gooseberry bush. Not enough of either to do much with really, so I made Gooseberry, Strawberry & Elderflower jam. The strawberries add a nice colour & sweetness to the gooseberries, & the elderflower gives it a bit of that beautiful summer fragrance - lush!!!! Only enough for one jar, but I had it for tea on homemade scones (thanks to Jo at Henry’s Campsite) & some Cornish clotted cream & it was like being in an Enid Blyton book! I also made Caramelized Onion Marmalade from some of the onions I harvested last week - which caramelized a bit much I think, I’m not sure we’ll ever get it out of the jar! There’s no two ways about it, my cooking is very hit & miss….! Back to work today, complete nightmare….. Thank goodness the beardy weirdy had a glass of wine ready for my return….

Friday, 12 June 2009

The point of growing onions....

My goodness, where has the week gone? After the washout weekend I don’t seem to have stopped - but I’ve just popped out into the garden with a glass of wine to see what’s been going on… Well, the rocket that the hens “trimmed” has revived - & promptly bolted! It’s the first year I’ve grown salad rocket rather than wild rocket, & although it does have a good flavour I think I’ll go back to the wild variety next year. Everything else is looking pretty perky - it’s amazing the power of rain. We have 5 rainwater butts, we never water with mains water, but it doesn’t matter how much of a drink you give stuff with a watering can, it really doesn’t compare with a good dousing of rain. Which kinda helps you keep your spirits up when it tips it down every time you put your nose outside of the back door! Especially on a Saturday & Sunday when you’ve been stuck in an office all week…. My 20(!!) tomato plants are coming on nicely. I’ve grown my tomatoes from seed, an Italian variety called Palla di Fuoco (which apparently means “ball of fire” - bought from The Real Seed Company, brilliant small company based in Wales specialising in heritage non hybrid varieties www.realseeds.co.uk) which are apparently good for eating & cooking - I’m hoping to have a glut so that I can make lots of tasty tomato sauces to freeze for the winter. G has pointed out that tins of good quality organic tomatoes are quite cheap, but I think he’s missing the point! However, I am coming to realise that I should be less huffy about the well worn advice of grow what you like & what costs the most to buy. I’ve now planted 2 rows of carrots, a total of 24 plants. G & I eat tons of carrots! It won’t take long to get through 24! I think maybe in future I should concentrate on the things that have many fruits from one plant - beans, leaves that kind of thing. However, the point of growing onions came home to me on Sunday morning when I came to make my morning frittata when I discovered we’d run out of onions! Now, if there’s 2 things I can’t bear to be without in the house it’s tins of toms & fresh onions - you can live off tomatoes & onions!! So, having had a good stomp around the house I suddenly remembered that I’d got a whole patch of red onions growing in the garden! G was saved from certain death just in time…. So, perhaps it is a good idea to grow a selection of cheap common things just for those times when you forget to buy them… Helping out at another Hedgerow Safari tomorrow, but hopefully back in the garden on Sunday. Need to do a bit more praying over my dwarf beans seeds which are being stubbornly unresponsive so far - & still no luck growing lettuce either, feel like such a fool!

Saturday, 30 May 2009

Hens can't be trusted...

Hi there Well, I’m back from a few days away with work (Hedgerow Safari-ing, let me know if you’re interested, there are still a couple more to go….) - the first thing I discover in the garden upon my return is that Cicely & Buttercup have eaten all the salad rocket! I am hoping that as it is a cut & come again, it will treat it as a cut, if somewhat drastic, & duly recover. It’s not that I’m bitter about it, but I have been looking up chicken casserole recipes…. I’m also slightly disappointed to find that nothing has grown much in the time I’ve been away. The beardy weirdy has pointed out that I shouldn’t have expected too much as it’s only been 3 days. However, at least I was able to reassure the veg man down the road that he isn’t going to be losing our business any time soon! Today has been glorious, so I’ve got all excited & planted out my climbing beans, squash & courgette plants. This has filled the beds out a bit & made it all look a bit more proper, however I am now worrying that slugs will chomp through everything overnight, so I’ve popped plastic bottles over everything - whole area now resembles a bottle factory…. I am experimenting a bit with a few things this year - permaculture suggests that you plant things closer together than usual, also that you companion plant. This gives better ground cover to keep in moisture & suppress weeds, also attracts beneficial insects, & hopefully should give better yields from smaller areas. I think it will also look quite pretty, so I’m going for it! I’ve also built(!) a “salad house” on the lawn, using 3 pieces of clear plastic left over from the lean-to roof & an old plastic compost bag - I appreciate this may be a bit difficult to visualise, so I have included a couple of photos… I’ve piled in a load of home-made compost, & I’ve planted tomatoes, a cucumber & some mixed basil seeds. I think I may also pop some salad leaves in there as well, since it should be pretty much hen proof!!!! My other experiment is with the carrots - I’ve never grown them before & I keep reading about carrot fly (I sometimes think that you’re better off not knowing …!) - it seems that carrot fly is attracted to the smell of the carrots, so you can plant onions, chives or leeks as a deterrent, or put a barrier around the crop up to 30 cm high (apparently the flies can’t fly higher than this - how do they know?!!), or put fleece over the whole crop. To be honest, the jury still seems to be out regarding the allium thing (although I have planted some chives nearby), I can’t really be bothered to erect a barrier all the way round, & I don’t really want to use fleece because it’s a bit difficult to keep an eye on slug damage (& it looks a bit weird…). Soooo - to the cunning plan! I’ve popped a few short bamboo canes in the ground, tied a few strips of the (now redundant!) fleece to them & impregnated them with citronella oil - it’s good for keeping flies & mosquitoes away, so perhaps will work with carrot fly? I’ll let you know….. Hoping your garden is proving as much fun/work/worry as mine! J x

Friday, 29 May 2009

A few(!) garden photos....

Hi everybody, sorry to take so long, but here are a few photos of the garden taken last weekend, hope it gives you a flavour of the place...

Thursday, 21 May 2009

Welcome to the Smallest Smallholding in Somerset!

Hello & welcome to our garden. Maybe I'd better start by introducing us & describing the garden a bit... (Pictures will follow when I've worked out how to use Flikr!!)

Well, I think I can safely say that it's not the kind of garden mother-in-laws like!! I live in a 1930's bungalow in between the somewhat faded beach resort of Weston-super-Mare & the new-build nightmare that used to be the village of Worle. I share this suburban utopia with my recently-made-redundant-long-haired-beardy-weirdy-husband Gary (affectionately known as Bums, for reasons that are too lengthy to go into, but don't be scared, it's nothing nasty!), a rescue cat called Coco, 2 rabbits, Gert & Daisy, a guineapig, Merry (who are kept for their compost value - & they are also very cute!!), plus 5 hens - Hermione, Harriet, Valentine, Cicely & Buttercup.

I suppose what I've really been aiming for is a kind of suburban smallholding (I watched The Good Life at a very formative age!) - food is a really important thing for us, Gary is a brilliant cook & I love to grow food so it works really well. I've been gradually digging up the lawn for about 5 years now - & we would still starve if it wasn't for the veg chap down the road!!! So, still a lot to learn.... The garden itself is about 65 x 40 feet & is a muddle mix of seats, slabs, veg & herb patches, wood piles, lawn, fruit trees, pond & pets - Ground Force makeover it aint!!!!

I was lucky enough to do a permaculture design course over the winter - I'd never heard of permaculture before last summer, when a friend at work suggested we did an introductory course that a local village allotment society had arranged. She ended up only doing the first day -I was totally hooked. It really seemed that much of what I had believed & practised over the years suddenly took shape for me - & I could even give it a name! In practice it means trying to apply the 3 main permacuture principles - Earth care, people care & fair shares. Which sounds a bit airy fairy, but in fact just means trying to live in harmony with the land & the people around you. Look for the resources that you already have, rather than defaulting to going out & buying them - make do & mend really. Work with nature, not against it, & try to share skills....

So I'm now working my design into the garden, & looking forward to the Forest Garden course I'm doing into July so I can transform the rest of the lawn! Well, we're well into May now & it's been a really busy couple of weeks - salad rocket, herbs & nettle tops are pickable & I'm looking forward to an omelette for breakfast at the weekend made with our own eggs & assorted leaves. Bliss! I'll be back soon to share experiences of planting out carrots in the rain, doing it again 2 days later after the slugs have eaten them, & why planting in pots is not an option when you have hens....!! Love & light, Janey x