Posts Tagged Gardening
May 20, 2009 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Grow your own Vegetables ·Tagged Gardening, herbs, tomatoes
No, not more veg box offerings, grow your own this time. On tuesday I took some of my surplus herb seedlings to a plant swap and ended up with more plants than I was intending to bring back. I certainly wasn’t planning on 3 more tomato plants. I believe they are 1 each of:
- Marmande
- San marzano
- Golden sunrise
It looks like the san marzano and golden sunrise are greenhouse varieties so I don’t know what I’ll do with those, perhaps the mini green house could be adapted be taking the shelves out. Marmande should be ok outside.
So now I have 5 tumbling tom red (3 already in hanging baskets) for little salad toms much loved by the small person; 3 tomato roma for plum tomatoes that I was thinking of making into tomato sauce or similar. The san marzano can go with these if I get any fruit; 4 very small plants of gardener’s delight, more salad tomatoes; 1 marmande which is a beefsteak variety; and 1 golden sunrise which is a yellow salad tomato – pretty!
Unfortunatly I missed out of the black pearl tomato plants that were also at the plant swap, probably for the best but they do sound interesting. I also brought home a small african marigold and a clump of marjoram so thats cool – free plants.
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May 13, 2009 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged comfrey, compost, garden planning, Gardening, penstemon, rhubarb, water butt
This post is rather late because we’ve had problems with our broadband connection, hopefully it should be on its way to being fixed now.
On to the compost. This weekend I spent some time clearing the side bed and siteing the second compost bin in its permanent position. Our garden is basically wider than it is long and wider at the bottom end than at the back of the house. All this extra width is the utility room side of the house so is becomming the useful part of the garden. The shed is already there and I’m clearing the bed along the fence of the very large hebe and the daffodils, wild garlic and mint will be moved. I uncovered 3 penstemons which have been cut back but left. I’ll try and take some cuttings if I want to move them but they are ok at the moment.
The original compost bin has been half emptied, mainly of the grass cuttings added recently and these have been mixed with the prunings and some other bits of leaf matter and semi composted bark from else where and filled the second bin already. Both compost bins will be next to each other eventually, I just put the first one on the flattest bit of clear ground near the back door when we got it back in february, unfortunatly it is now sliding down the slope – woops! To make sure this didn’t happen again I actually got the spirit level out at the weekend so it should be ok.
To have some free rain water for the plants there will be a small water butt from the shed roof, unfortunate placement of downpipes from the house means there are very limited places to put water butts without blocking access to patio doors, the garage or the side path. Why can’t developers consider these things when designing houses? This house is less than 20 years old so water butts and an increasing lack of water weren’t exactly new things when it was built.
The rest of the bed will have some comfrey, a rhubarb crown and whatever flowers I can fit in the gaps. I love having flowers in the house so a few I can cut would be great. Sounds like a plan!
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May 4, 2009 at 10:45 pm · Filed under Grow your own Vegetables ·Tagged akg, aubergine, basil, beetroot, blueberry, carrot, chamomile, chilli plants, chives, coriander, cougette, cucumber, french beans, Gardening, garlic, herbs, lavender, lemon balm, lettuce, lovage, oregano, parsley plants, peas, peppers, radish, raspberry, rosemary, runner beans, sage, spinach, squash, strawberry, thyme, tomatoes, zuccini
What’s happening in the garden at the beginning of May? Lots is the short answer, keep reading for the long answer.
We have reached the end of a fairly productive Bank Holiday weekend where we even had very plesant weather on saturday. Actually the weather on sunday was nice too but we were visiting family so I didn’t get out in the garden for more than a brief watering session. Today I went to the garden centre and got lots done between showers although the weather was never great and was getting chilly by half way through the afternoon but by then I had done what I needed to do so I’m happy. This is what’s currently growing (or not) outside and in…
Kitchen windowsill – This is a bit of a jungle with all the chilli and big pepper plants on one window ledge and some smaller seedlings on the other. There are 2 Aubergines (Black Beauty) growing nicely with several true leaves now; Lots of Mixed Sweet Pepper and Chilli ‘Hot’ Cayenne seedlings that could do with potting up, 3 of each that were potted up in good time and are now lovely big bushy plants with some nearly flowering and another half dozen potted up a couple of weeks ago that are growing better but will probably never catch up with the first ones; 3 Tomatoes (Gardener’s Delight) that have only just germinated, I planted 4 so the last might still appear; 2 Peas (Kelvedon Wonder) also just germinated but looking very pretty already, I’m not sure where these are going to go yet; A pot of coriander and a pot of lemon coriander seedlings just germinated to go in the tender herbs box when there is no more risk of frost; A pot of plain leaved parsley which is doing noting so far, it was started the same time as the corainders but the seed may be too old, I’ll leave it a bit longer and see what happens; A small Tabasco chilli seedling we were given which is growing nicely and will need potting up soon; 3 large chilli plants we were also given, one each of Fresno, Long Slim Cayenne and Santa Fe, which are lovely plants and 2 have tiny white start shaped flowers.
Greenhouse – 2 squash (Cobnut) and 2 cucumber (Marketmore) which will go in the 2 empty growbags when the risk of frost has passed; 3 tomato (Roma) for pots and 5 tomato (Tumbling Tom Red) for hanging baskets; A pot each of curly parsley, bush basil and sweet basil for the tender herbs box; A pot each of lovage and mint which probably should have been planted out but I’d forgotten were there; The spare oregano and chive plants from the herb box I’ve already planted up, I might need to use some of the oregano as something’s been digging in the compost in there and I think I’ve lost a couple of seedlings.
Herbs – All in pots as I have no space for a herb bed. 3 thymes together in a trough: Silver Posy, Common and Archer’s Gold; Lemon thyme; Lemon balm (Anyone noticed a lemon theme yet?); Wild strawberry; Double chamomile; Oregano, Sage and Chives together in a plastic windowbox; Lavender (Vera) which is a lovely ball shape on a short trunk. I hope I can keep its shape as it gives height to the collection of pots round the edge of the patio; 2 rosemary cuttings which are doing well; I have also found an unidentified mint, possible wild garlic and what looks like some kind of strawberry in a corner of the garden I’ll try and move into pots before the compost heap and water butt get put on top of them.
Fruit – On saturday I bought a raspberry (Malling Jewel) and a blueberry (Bluecrop) which are now in pots on the patio, exciting!
Vegetables – This is what I’m trying to grow in pots or containers. Climbing french beans in a huge pot with a bamboo wigwam, no idea if it will work, if the pot is big enough or the wigwam is tall enough but it will be fun trying, besides I couldn’t resist their lovely heart shaped leaves after listening to this episode of the AKG (I haven’t grown these from seed, I bought the plants today at the garden centre whilst failing to buy an unnecessary bag of ericaceous compost for the blueberry…); Runner beans (Hestia), this is a dwarf variety but I don’t think I have ever seen a dwarf runner bean before so I don’t know how big / tall / bushy it gets. They might need potting up again and they only have a short cane at the moment but hopefully I might get something off them; 2 cougette (All Green Bush) in a grow bag; The clove of garlic from the supermarket that was trying to grow, no idea what to do with this or even if there is anything I can do, but its a fun experiment; I have 2 shallow plastic trays I’ve lined with plastic and filled with compost and I’m trying to grow cut and come again salad in one and baby veg in the other. The radish (French Breakfast) is up and the beetroot (Boltardy) is beginning to appear but no sign of the carrot (Early Scarlet Horn) in one. I have mizuna in the other but the rest of the lettauce varieties have all failed probably because the seed wasn’t new, I need to get some more and try again; A pot of mixed lettauce plants I bought because its almost salad weather and my lettauce seeds have failed and a tray of spinach I have bought and not done anything with yet.
That is a long post and I haven’t mentioned the sunflowers, my plans for tomorrow or the millions of tiny weeds appearing in all the pots outside. I’m sure I’ll be posting again soon, there is so much going on at the moment.
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May 1, 2009 at 10:08 am · Filed under Gardening, Out and About ·Tagged chickens, Gardening, ngs
Firstly let me say sorry this post isn’t as good as the first version I wrote which my computer lost, it never is when you have to write the same thing again is it?
Wednesday we visited The Manor House Garden while it was open as part of the National Garden Scheme, a scheme which opens private gardens to the public for charity. I love visiting gardens through this scheme, they are ‘ordinary’ gardens rather than gardens planned and maintained with the public in mind. Thats not to say this garden was ordinary, most of the gardens open aren’t ordinary at all, but it is someone’s backgarden and often they are more the sort of size of most people’s backgardens.
This garden was a little jem, it had only been rediscovered about 20 years ago and has been carefully restored to the original Gertrude Jekyll plans since. There was a lovely wild garden, some beautifully planted walls and a rose garden with some interesting ideas for plants to put with the roses in our garden.
Another feature of NGS gardens is often good cake, and this one did not disapoint and we have a lovely afternoon tea with tiny sandwiches and yummy cake. It wasn’t their fault I only got half a slice of chocolate cake, the little man thought it was yummy as well and ate the other half.
He liked the pond with huge goldfish and the tiny bantam hens best, they are a little more dynamic than plants. I actually was rather taken with these cute little hens, peking bantams, and could quite easily see a couple of them pottering round our backgarden. The original thought was hens would be difficult to get someone to look after if we went away but I think we are already past that point so maybe we could reconsider. They were such characters with their little feathery feet.
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April 22, 2009 at 10:29 pm · Filed under Gardening, Grow your own Vegetables, Out and About ·Tagged chamomile, Gardening, herbs, rhs garden wisley, strawberry, thyme
Last week we visited the RHS Garden at Wisley which was a lovely day out despite the rain. We didn’t have time to see all of it and some areas weren’t very full at the moment, including the vegetable gardens that I was particularly interested in seeing, so we will have to go back again. It did give me hope that even tho I haven’t got my raised bed yet it isn’t going to be too late to grow a reasonable amount this year as there isn’t a huge amount going on in a veg garden at the moment.
We particularly liked the glasshouse, and not just because it was raining outside, and the trials field was very interesting. The small one thought the children’s lunch box was very good and he would be correct, actually all the food was good. It turned out to be a good place to take him as he had plenty of space to run around in and wear himself out – he even asked to go back in the pushchair at one point.
On the way out is the plant centre which has a huge number of plants. I will confess to not looking round the outside bits much at all except the herbs as it was heaving it down with rain, but I did buy 3 different thymes, a chamomile and a wild strawberry and I actually thought their prices were pretty good. Certainly the 3 small thymes were the nicest I’ve seen for sale as I have been looking for some for a little while and they were less than £2 each. I have seen plants for sale for a lot more than that that didn’t look half as nice.
We will definatly be going back to see the changes in the garden over the seasons as we all enjoyed it as a day out, the plant centre was great, it is fairly convienent to get too and the cake was good.
Today I planted the three thymes up into a small terracotta trough. One is common thyme, one is lemon thyme with a yellow foliage and the third is a silver foliage one. Yes I have their names on labels, but those are in the trough with the plants and that is outside. Sorry, that isn’t very helpful really. Anyway, it looks good.
This will be part of my herb garden in pots when I get some more plants big enough to use. So far I only have one other trough with tiny chive, oregano and sage plants I have grown from seed, a rosemary grown from a cutting and a lemon balm I bought earlier on. I have curly parsley, bush basil and sweet basil seedlings to plant up soon into a second trough, probably with the chamomile, and lovage and mint seedlings which will be in individual pots because they are thugs. I’d love a little standard bay tree clipped into a ball but will have to save up for that as I don’t have the patience to grow that from seed or even train one from a small plant. I’m hoping to plant some coriander seeds soon as well and that will probably be all I have space and tubs for at the moment. At least with pots I can expand it without running out of flower bed space, I just need to buy more pots. Hopefully I can keep the pots near the back door along the sheltered south facing wall during the cooler months and move the ones that don’t like it so hot in summer when I won’t mind going further to pick them for cooking. I can also bring in any tender plants and have fresh herbs all year. Thats the theory anyway.
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April 22, 2009 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Gardening ·Tagged garden planning, Gardening
I have managed to spend some time in the garden over the last couple of days and I have had a pruning spree. I removed 2 bushes (One was in a very overcrowded corner of the garden and the other looked very dead and I was fed up of looking at it) and gave a floppy climber-bush-thing a hair cut. The floppy climber-bush-thing now looks much neater and less like a triffid that will grab your ankle as you walk past, it does bear a strong resemblance to the tombliboo bush from In The Night Garden tho…
When we moved in the garden looked great, it looked like it needed a little tidying up and weeding, but that was all. We first saw the house last November and moved in January so we are only just now beginning to see it with leaves out and it is becoming aparent that there are a few problems. The 18ft high cornus’ in the front garden were the first ones to be attacked, they still haven’t shooted again but I’m still hoping and if they don’t it means I have space for new plants so there would be a silver lining.
Yesterday I removed a bush from the corner bed that has, amongst other things, 2 large rowans and 2 rather nice acers in a very small space. The bush was too big and at risk of smothering the acers so I took it out. There are still about 3 too many big plants there, but hopefully with careful pruning they will be fine as I like the acers and the rowans are good screening for the road. The other problem in this bed now is the huge number of suckers from one of the trees just over the fence but its one I can’t fix I’ll just have to cut them off as I notice them.
The dead bush had the potential to be very pretty, it looked like heather or possibly some sort of fine evergreen but with little white star shaped flowers, however 95% was dead and brown. Leaves, needles, or whatever they were dropped off everytime you looked at it and it was right outside the patio door and I was fed up of looking at it.
There are still some bushes I want to get rid of, another dead one that I’m going slowly about removing because it is next to the honeysuckle that I think the blackbird is nesting in, and two the other side of the garden when I’m going to put the veg bed and compost heaps. One is a cotoneaster which has dead bits anyway and the other is a leggy hebe.
It is clear that someone spent a lot of money on plants for this garden when it was layed out and I’m sure it looked beautiful but not enough space was given for those plants to grow so now some parts are very overcrowded and others have grown too big through lack of pruning. Its still a good basis and there are some lovely things which would be very expensive to replace but I also have a chance to make it my own and put things in I like, a little at a time, and give them all space to grow and mature. It should be fun!
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April 15, 2009 at 9:13 pm · Filed under Birds, Grow your own Vegetables ·Tagged Birds, chilli plants, cougette, cucumber, Gardening, goldfinch, runner beans, squash, tomatoes, zuccini
Just to prove my theory wrong, today I saw 3 goldfinches at the feeders at the same time.
I have also got a plastic greenhouse to house the overflow plants from the window ledges, mainly chilli and pepper plants, but the dwarf beans, cucumbers, courgettes, squash and possibly the tomatoes will go out there as well when they are big enough.
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April 1, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under Grow your own Vegetables ·Tagged aubergine, basil, books, chilli plants, chives, cougette, cucumber, Gardening, garlic, herbs, lovage, mint, oregano, parsley plants, runner beans, sage, square foot gardening, squash, tomatoes, zuccini
Or at least the seeds are springing up on my kitchen window sill. I have basil (2 varieties), sage, chives, mint, parsley and oregano. Only the lovage isn’t doing anything yet. My first tumbling tom has sprouted as well and I have poked in a clove of garlic that was trying to grow in the cupboard so I’ll have to see if that manages to come to anything.
The chillis and peppers are coming along well. I have aquired 3 more chillis from a friend, one each of 3 different varieties, so I could end up with a lot of chillis this year! We used one of last years chillis the other night and I’ve saved the seeds from that so I might sow some of those as well – It was quite hot but I don’t know the variety.
Other gardening activities include planting cougette, cucumber, plum tomato, squash, aubergine and dwarf runner bean seeds and lots of reading. I have finished The Edible Container Garden and only have a couple of chapters left of Square Foot Gardening. Both are good for gardening in the sort of spaces they cover. SFG is very prescriptive, but I do like the idea and will probably try and follow it at least to start with. It was the RHS 3 x 3m plots that made me consider veg gardening in the first place but I couldn’t find enough information on what plants, how many per square, when to plant and other details I wanted so this book suits me. It is very american – I’m going to be talking about zuccini before soon, and there is a lot of talk of last frost and first fall frost dates which I have found difficult to find out for the UK. Oh, and some of the ‘pests’ mentioned are unlikely to be found in a UK garden, but the principle should be fairly easy to convert. The one thing I don’t like is the excessive (in my opinion) use of peat, so I will be looking for an alterntive. The explanation on the website that the peat doesn’t need to be replaced still doesn’t sit well with me.
I just need to build my raised bed now – The wood is in the garage so hopefully I will have time to saw and hammer and paint and dig and things soon, yippee!
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March 24, 2009 at 2:52 pm · Filed under Gardening, Grow your own Vegetables ·Tagged akg, books, chilli plants, Gardening, hypericum
I have just purchased a hypericum inodorum bush, from of all places, pound land. Well I felt sorry for it, it is trying to grow shoots and has been kept in the dark so they are a bit pale, at least there is no doubt it is alive at the moment. Well for a pound I thought I’d risk it. Its going to go in the front garden now there is a bit more room after pruning the three huge cornus. Hopefully it will brighten up a fairly shady spot. It was only when I looked it up on the internet to see whether it would mind a bit of shade I found out hypericum is St Johns Wort, interesting, at least I though so.
I also bought 3 small hanging baskets I’m going to try herbs in, a half tray propagator and lid and a collapsable garden rubbish container. I wasn’t planning of buying any of these things today but never mind.
The chilli / pepper plants that have been potted up are all beginning to form there proper leaves, not that it will help me tell them apart. I still have quite a few to pot up so I think I over did the seeds a bit. Thats a lesson learnt for next year.
I also received this morning two new gardening books from Amazon, The Edible Container Garden: Fresh Food from Tiny Spaces and Square Foot Gardening: A New Way to Garden in Less Space with Less Work. Both were reviewed on an episode of The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast which I recommend if you are at all interested in gardening. I am listening to all the back episodes which, apart from having to keep checking what date they were recorded to see when ‘now’ is, are really interesting and cover a very wide range of topics. I haven’t had chance to read the books yet but I can’t wait to read them and get my veg garden up and growing.
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March 23, 2009 at 11:03 am · Filed under Cooking, Gardening ·Tagged Cooking, Gardening
Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the UK and I got a lovely card and a planted hanging basket so that was really nice. The hanging basket is currently outside my kitchen window but will probably be moved outside the front door as soon as I can arrange for a bracket to be put up there.
I cooked sunday lunch for my parents and made my mum some rocky road after some hints were dropped. I’ll have to let you know whether they tasted ok. I did offer A one of the marshmallows while I was making them, and after eagerly trying it he pulled a really funny face and picked it out of hs mouth with his fingers and gave it back to me, lovely! So that’s the second thing he’s tried and doesn’t like, the other is ice cream. Funny child!
After lunch we attacked the three cornus bushes in the front garden. They were about 18ft high and hadn’t been pruned for several years. I also think that three is too many for the space, but I can’t do a lot about that. They are now cut right down and I have my fingers crossed they will shoot again, if not, I’ll replace them with something else. I do like cornus, just not ones that are threatening to shade the upstairs window.
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