Harvest time

I picked some lettuce from my garden this morning - it was delicious! What an achievement :)

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to pull it right out from the roots though, or whether if I just snip it off the top then some more will grow... any suggestions?

Also, same question for coriander. (My hands smell lovely now :)

Cats

These are my cats. The white one is Esme and the tabby is Alfie. They're lovely aren't they?

How on earth do I stop them from digging up my herb garden?!

Strawberries... and a little helper

The main reason for posting today is that I have a question.

Strawberries are the one thing that I have managed to grow reasonably successfully in the past - unfortunately it was in a rented house (well, garden) so no sooner than I was able to bask in my triumph we had to move out. However, I did manage to stick around long enough to notice that the plant was shooting out it's tendrils and inserting them in to the soil at various other points in the garden; I presume this is it's own special way of ensuring the pitter-patter of tiny strawberry plants.

Now, here's my problem. My strawberry plant looks like this:

So what happens when the little tendrils are grown up and ready to flee the pot, and there's no where for them to go?

I have heard talk of a thing called a 'cutting' but I'm not quite sure if it's appropriate in this case. Any suggestions?

On a lighter note, I had a little helper in the garden today :)

Today I planted a brick

There's a little step up to the main part of our garden (hexagonal paving slabs as a pose to rectangular ones... nice) and for some reason whoever did it left a little gap. It's annoyed me for ages, so today I planted a leftover brick to fill the gap. It looks quite silly next to the other blocks, granted, but for the moment it serves a higher purpose so it's staying.

I'm very proud that I've dug up enough stones to fill a whole hexagonal-bit-of-mud-where-the-slab-used-to-be. However I have now run out of second hand stones so am going to have to sneak down to Homebase and buy a bag of shingle when Ste's not looking.

Weeeeeeeeeeds!

Take a look at this monstrosity! I have never seen a root like that on a dandelion before... and it looks like it broke off so I suspect there is more hiding down there somewhere...

Stormy weather...

We had a hail storm the other day... look what happened to my poor chives!

Carrots

These are my carrots - or rather I hope they are. Never having grown carrots before I'm not sure what they're supposed to look like! I'm hoping that the small round-leaved weedy looking things that I pulled out from in between these shoots were in fact weeds, and not the other way around...

And while I'm on the subject of carrots, I keep reading that I'm supposed to 'thin' them... what on earth (no pun intended) does this mean? Does it mean that I have to dig them up and replant them a bit more spread out? And how do I know when to do it? Wont I kill them?! Help!

My adventures in the garden

Well, where do I begin? As you might know if you've ever been to my house, my garden is usually a mass of overgrown wilderness which, to be honest, I've never really had the inclination to do much about. I've had idle thoughts - 'Wouldn't it be nice if the garden was tidy and I could go and sit in it...' but never been bothered enough to do anything about it.

Until now.

I don't know what happened - maybe I reached a 'certain age', maybe it was the influence of some new friends (who happen to be very green fingered) or maybe it was seeing how much my daughter enjoyed 'watering' the plants at a friends house. Anyway, whatever it was I decided to start gardening and now I'm hooked! I honestly can't believe how much I like it, to the point where I'm really wondering why I left it so long, and am bemoaning lost years I could have spent happily getting soil under my fingernails.

So anyway, I started this blog so my family and friends can keep up to date with my exploits and experiments, and more importantly, help me out when I get stuck or do something stupid. Also it's quite likely that unless there's pictorial evidence they wont actually believe I've done anything.

Regretfully it didn't occur to me to take a 'before' shot until today, when I've already done quite a bit of clearing, but I've cleverly missed out the corner that I've cleared to give you a rough idea of what my garden usually looks like:

To reinforce just how bad it is, that stripey bit on the right hand side at the back is actually a bench. Although, to be fair it has looked worse than this in the past - thanks are due to my mum who decided to clear it all one day; some bits didn't grow back - result!

So what have I done so far? Well I'm a big picture person so in order to motivate me to do anything I have to know what I'm aiming for. Translated in to gardening terms, this means I am doing it very slowly but thoroughly, starting in one place and getting that right before moving on. There's no random ripping up of weeds only to have to come back and sort the roots out later, no, I've got the end firmly in mind and this time I am doing a proper job.

I started in one corner a couple of weeks ago, and have cleared a load of brambles and weeds - it's a funny kind of raised bit which would be good to have a barbeque on (if we should happen upon a sunny day). I've also been lifting the paving slabs (we have nice hexagonal ones) and digging out the roots of all the weeds. It's quite an illuminating process - after years of careful neglect there's an absolute superhighway of roots criss-crossing all over the place.

At one point I was going to dig up the whole lot and make it in to a vegetable patch, but since finding out what the soil is actually like under there I've decided against it. Instead I'm using the old paving slabs and making little decorative herb gardens, like this:

So the bit of compost in the middle has been planted up with chives, the six paving slabs immediately surrounding it have been dug up and relaid with roots and weeds removed and an ants nest nuked. I'm going to take out the other slabs that are adjacent at the moment so it's a stand-alone thing, like a flower with a herby centre. The idea is to have a few of these in the garden and then shingle in between. (I've been retrieving a lot of pebbles from the soil under the slabs - my husband is a very good-willed man but I think he might draw the line at me spending actual money to buy stones...)

So that's the back garden.

In other news, I have also planted up some pots which I keep in the front of the house, as that's where we get the most sun.

I've got some herbs, lettuce, carrots and a strawberry plant. But more on these another day...