The Great Garden Experiment

Greenhouse homing

2010-03-09T08:54:00.006Z

So, here I was with this enormous green monstrosity, much bigger than I had been planning to buy, and not *really* (well, at all) fitting where I had planned for it to go.

I tried it here:

... but I didn't like that.

Then, in a stroke of genius, I decided it would fit behind the door where the dustbins currently reside. However, that meant finding a new home for the bins. Which meant clearing this -

... which is *actually* not *just*my mess don't-you-know; next door have very kindly allowed their spikey, uncontrollable, take-over-every-inch-of-soil plant to grow over the fence in to my garden. (We are very like-minded when it comes to gardening...)

So anyway. I had a fight with the front garden, and on the whole I think it would be counted as a draw. I created some space to put the bins:

... and it left me with a load of cuts and bruises and aching like I've just been kicked in the back by a horse. (In case you're wondering, I was pulling up bushes with my bare hands and a pair of gardening shears, seeing as my now ex-husband (don't worry, nothing to do with the gardening) took the spade with him to clear the snow earlier this year...)

What an adventure. Now fingers crossed for a few weeks of nice weather. I suppose it would have been a good idea to check the forecast before running off and planting stuff...

New developments...

2010-03-07T19:45:00.008Z

Here is my latest gardening acquisition:

I think it's supposed to be like a portable greenhouse.

Anyway, it's quite cool.

Mum and I bought it last week with the thought that it would go nicely in the porch (where it's usually quite warm when the sun's been out) and could germinate some seedlings. We'd then move it outside once it warms up.

We debated long and hard whether to get the standard size or extra wide, and in the end decided that the standard would fit in the porch easily, but we didn't think the extra large one would.

And how right we were...

Probably should have read the box a bit more carefully.

Here we go again...

2010-03-07T18:07:00.007Z

Well. Lots has happened since I last wrote anything here, but sadly very little of it in the garden. Dad, Sue and Tom came round over the summer and hacked my back garden to pieces (along with part of Dad's electric chainsaw...) so it's now slightly clearer but looking very ugly indeed. I'm coming to the conclusion that at some point I am just going to have to make a decision about what to do with it. Sigh.

But good news - I'm so impressed that my carrots and strawberries survived being buried under all that snow...

... the strawberries appear to still be alive, and even sprouting new leaves...

... and we've had some fantastic carrots out of the last lot!

This one is known as the 'dancing carrot'.

And these as 'cuddling carrots'.

More to follow, but I think the new developments deserve a separate post. TTFN!

Squash(ed)

2009-08-05T19:17:00.003+01:00

I was ever so proud of my little squash, which was doing very well in it's new large pot:

... ever so well that is, until I (in my wisdom) decided it needed more room to grow and transplanted it into a grow bag.

Where it promptly died.

Because I had - of course - severed half the roots when I dug it out of the pot.

And - of course - a plant that big does actually need all it's roots.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

However, I am pleased to report that the squash wasn't as dead as I originally thought. I trimmed off a few of the deadest looking bits (I'd read somewhere that it's good to do that to some plant or other so thought it was worth a go). It now seems to be slowly recovering and sprouting a few new buds.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed. And not touching it again. Ever.

Success!!

2009-08-05T19:10:00.006+01:00

I realise now I forgot to post this photo a couple of weeks ago of my carrots peeking through -

I had been avoiding digging them up as I didn't want to be too hopeful - I've been told it's very hard to grow carrots so I had this vision of little stumpy things, and being really disappointed. However, today I braved the unknown and......

Hurrah!!

We celebrated in style:

.... by taking loads of pictures of it :)

I think I will leave the others in for a while longer and see if they will grow a bit more - this one had a pretty long root still tailing on the end so I'm hopeful... even on the verge of getting a bit cocky! (After *one* carrot... oh dear....)

Progress report

2009-06-23T19:13:00.005+01:00

I have been sadly neglectful of the garden recently.... the weather has been swinging between gorgeous sunshine and hideous rain, and typically the weekends I have been at home and able to spend time on the garden have been the ones where it was bucketing down.

The very real side effect of this extreme pendulum-like weather is that the weeds in the back garden are now taller than I am. Hmmm. I suspect I will have to rethink the plan for that and possibly enlist some help from some more garden-minded people. Any volunteers?!

On the plus side, my veggies out the front are doing well -

Coriander...

... carrots...

.. and squash - a new addition to our family, thanks Jane!

It's looking a bit limp at the moment but hopefully it will settle in soon, introduce itself to the neighbours, that sort of thing.

Lettuce

2009-06-05T08:33:00.001+01:00

Thought this deserved a photo!

Oops...

2009-06-05T08:26:00.003+01:00

I got so excited about my growing veg that I have rather neglected the back garden for a while, and a few weeks of alternating sunshine and heavy rain have, well... perhaps it's better illustrated by a picture:

Taken from the upstairs window as you can probably tell - mind you it really doesn't show the full horror as the weeds are probably at shoulder hight by now. Perhaps I should brave the jungle and take some more pictures.

However, on a positive note, the bit I have actually cleared has stayed remarkably weed-free:

Result!

I have thinned my carrots...

2009-06-03T22:26:00.003+01:00

... but I'm really not convinced I've done it right! Do I need to pull out some more?

It was a bizarre experience. I had planted far too many seeds of course, and it felt terribly wasteful and a bit mean pulling up all the ones who didn't quite make it.

When it comes down to it, it's still a matter of life and death... even if it is only carrots. ;o)

Harvest time

2009-05-31T12:57:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-17T15:08:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-14T19:53:00.004+01:00

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

2009-05-11T21:19:00.004+01:00

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!

2009-05-11T13:36:00.002+01:00

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...

2009-05-11T13:31:00.003+01:00

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

Carrots

2009-05-11T08:17:00.002+01:00

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

2009-05-10T22:39:00.000+01:00

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...