Quick update

Everything in the greenhouse is doing well. The broad beans are now outside and will be closely followed by the peas and sweet corn  tomorrow.  4 courgette plants and 5 cucumber plants have been transferred to bigger pots from their seed trays  and I planted 3 new blueberry plants after finally deciding where to have them.

watering the carrot tubs, which will also be outside very soon.

All this rain is good for the garden and water butt levels but the green house still needs regular watering, lucky for me I have two very willing and able helpers!

Peatastic

Its been a while since the last blog update but hopefully this one will make up for it!



it's 2 foot wider!

 We have been very busy over the past couple of months, the green house has been cleared and a few extra shelves put in, also the green house door has been patched up with some plastic sheet, the veg patch has increased in size and the flower bed had been prepared for some peatastic pea growing! 

So far we have planted some potatoes in 2 containers that last year were home to some very unsuccessful strawberries (think we had 3 red ones)  In the green house there are peas, broad beans, tomatoes, cucumber, beetroot, lettuce, peppers, chilies, carrots (in big containers that will be put outside at some point), strawberries, a selection of herbs and some other stuff I can't think of right now.


The peas had exploded into life due to the good weather we've been enjoying recently so we decided to plant them into the flower bed today.  As usual the girls helped, digging holes and making sure the ground was thoroughly watered.

 Some more peas have been planted in the green house which, when ready, will be transferred into the pea bed along with some newly sewed peas.  Hopefully this will give us a steady crop over the summer that lasts a bit longer than last year!



Over the next couple of weeks we will be planting seeds straight into the veg patch and thinking of a sensible solution to the herb conundrum, how close can we plant them to the kitchen?  No point growing lovely herbs if no one can be arsed going to get them!



wigwam bam gonna grow some peas man! yeah I'm that sad


There is a hosepipe ban coming in on 5th April, not too much of a problem as we use the water butts so used to lugging round a watering can.  Fingers crossed for a bit of rain! (sorry sun worshippers)

That's it for now. Bye!



It's 2012! Time to get stuck in

We decided to venture out into the veg garden today to do a little prep work.  Weeding was the main task and the girls got stuck in, we soon had the current veg patch cleared.

Next job is to extend the patch in every direction possible then prep the green house (which really means fix the door that blew off and smashed!) Decide where to put our portable plastic greenhouse we were given (cheers nanny) and find a site for our recently purchased lavender, thyme & rosemery plants.

Hopefully we will have learnt from last years mistakes and have more success in the growing and harvesting department. Exciting times ahead!

Slow progress

Not much to report.  The salad is growing as are the radish and we have bubble wrapped some more of the greenhouse.  Still not sorted which greenhouse heater to get as the choice and cost (of initial purchase and running) vary so still not sure what will be best.  Will have to sort something soon mind as its getting colder. 

On the plus side i'm off to get some guttering to attach to the greenhouse tomorrow! so we'll be one water butt better off, maybe two.......

Cold at last!

Just a short post today as we had a quick job of moving the salad we planted last month into a couple of grow bags.  The main lesson learnt today was sow the seeds straight into the grow bags but the girls had fun helping out in the greenhouse

I cut out the grow bags and the girls got digging, then chose which plants (more like mix and neither were too good at keeping the seeds separate when planting!)  they wanted to move into the grow bags, simple! 

The only problem we had was me explaining why the rocket and lettuce didn't need any canes sticking in the grow bags!

That was it for today garden wise.  We will plant some more of the same seeds next week (straight into the grow bags this time!) and get round to finishing the bubble wrap insulation.  Having looked into heaters to keep the frost off we're going to go for an 80w tube heater as we don't want the electric bill to overshadow the amount we grow (or don't grow as it may be................)

Veg to the future

Farewell August, hello September.  A finer month as far as we're concerned for many reasons, a big one being the apple tree which has done well this year.  The kids (and every adult to visit us) love eating a freshly picked apple when playing in the garden.

All our crops have been picked for this year which is sad but also exciting as we can get on changing the layout of the veg garden!

First we decide to grow some salad in the green house over winter! So we've started insulating it with bubble wrap which is an on going and slightly boring/frustrating job. Below is just the windows covered up which has already made a big difference.

I am looking up heaters to keep the greenhouse above zero in the depths of winter but hopefully i'll have plenty of time to research that as, as usual, we have no idea what we're doing. 



Anyway, greenhouse almost ready we went ahead and planted some seeds.  Hardy lettuce, rocket, some other leafy stuff that looked good on the packet, radishes and spring onions.

The girls had great fun using their fingers to make holes ready for the seeds to be dropped in

Liliana managed to keep different seeds in rows but Mimi decided they'd stand a better chance all mixed together!  When these greens get going (fingers crossed) we'll move them into some grow bags.  The spring onions and radish we sown in the larger pots so won't need to be moved (feel free to add a horticultural word if you know it)

Once the seeds were in they got another layer of compost because it seemed like a good idea and we had some left

After the seeds were finish we gave them another good watering and moved them into the greenhouse but I didn't get any photos as it was a delicate operation.  The only thing left to do was pick an apple on the way back down the garden, sit back and relax

For those of you who are interested in what else we have planned for the veg patch............... tough i'm going to write it here anyway!

Attach a water butt to the greenhouse and have another on the patio to collect grey water which won't be used for anything we plan on eating. I think its still worth mentioning as my local council gave me two old wheelie bins that I will be using (note apple being consumed own stage left)

The current veg patch will be split in two and extended up to the wall which will give us more growing space and better access for the kids.  (we have a few pallets to use for raised boarders)  Also to increase our growing space further we hijacked a flower bed ready to grow peas in next year which currently looks like that.

That must be the longest one i've ever written, sorry for that!  Hopefully we'll make some more progress soon and have a photo of some lettuce shoots! (touch wood)

Mixed fortunes

Yesterday was the day we decided to harvest our potatoes and carrots.  We were pleasantly surprised with the potatoes as we weren’t expecting much due to the questionable placement of them and the fact the plants above ground looked in poor health.  We ended up with around 2Kg (give or take some dodgy looking ones!) of potatoes so not a massive haul but enough to make into a meal for us all  As usual the girls loved helping digging up the veg patch and finding out what yummy stuff we'd managed to grow.  We even had our youngest, Serenity, come and help mummy operate the fork!

Alas we come to some bad news.  The carrots were not in good shape when dug up.   A lot had been eaten by something (carrot fly?) and the rest were all tangled together with very stunted growth.  We decided to compost the lot as they looked in a bad way.  Lessons learnt for next years crop.

As the carrots and potatoes were the last of our veg in the patch work can commence on the re modeling of the veg patch to give us more growing space for next year!