Well, this is a suprise!

I went into the garden today, not expecting anything particularly exciting and what should I see, but this...

The first veg to appear in the garden is a pea pod! I really thought it would be a tomato, but no - a beautiful purple(!) pea pod.
Closer inspection revealed yet another...

... shown here next to my index finger - its very tiny!

This tomato plant has been looking a bit sad, I was worried it might be dying so I gave it quite a lot of food yesterday, and today it didn't look much better...

Until I noticed this...
THE FIRST TOMATO! I am so excited for the first one! Soon I will have more tomatoes than I know what to do with - HORRAY! Well, fingers crossed - this could still be the only one...

Just got to hope the others start to look scruffy too.

Just a pic of some of the other toms on the dividing wall - looking good!

Superfood Saturday

Today we went to our little local community garden centre to get my rather belated birthday present of a fruit tree. I was thinking of getting something like a pear or plum tree. I didn't fancy an apple tree and N said he wanted to get me something more interesting as a present, and wow, did I get something very interesting!

A goji bush!

The Himalayan superfood that had people going nuts for them a few years ago. They are high in antioxidants and are meant to banish celulite, improve circulation, improve eyesight, boost immunity and help me live to 200!! Or so the marketing people say. I don't eat these berries much but they are about £20 a kilo so its not surprising really, however once my little bush starts to fruit I'll be sticking two fingers up at the health food shop and chowing down on some fresh, air mile free, superfood.


I found this site to tell me about how to grow them and it doesn't seem too difficult. Just keep the bush in the sun, so fingers crossed it will be happy in its pot.
http://www.gojiking.co.uk/shop/growing-goji-berries.html

 This is what the bush should look like (picture borrowed from theallotmentgarden.co.uk) and by various account I have read they are very quick to grow and produce fruit after the first year, and because they from the Himalayas they can stand temp down to -15 so I don't need to worry about them in the winter! The only thing is they shouldn't be picked by hand only shaken from the vine and they de-oxidise quickly when touched.

The more I read about this fruit the more excited I am getting about my little bush outside! I'll pop some photos up soon.

sunshine garden time

In the last 2 weeks since I last posted the weather has become much better and my little garden is thriving!

Tomatoes

These little guys are doing excellently and I have so many I'm not sure what to do with them so I am planting them all over the garden to see which ones do best!

These are some Yellow Plums which were busting out of their little tray and are now scattered all over the garden.

Some of the tomatoes are still in pots but the biggest ones have been moved out. I am experimenting with putting some of them in the ground, some have gone into individual pots, some are sharing with other plants - just to see what happens!

These bad boys are the whippersnapper cherry tomatoes so hopefully they will bush over the edge and I will have cherry toms hanging down!

I put this basket up with my lovely drill! (thanks Grannie) and it is in one of the sunniest spots in the whole garden and gets very very hot!

I checked these toms today and I am very excited to report I can see some little flowers opening up on them so very soon I will be getting my first harvest!

Beans and Peas

I found a buckled, bicycle wheel by the side of the road and I thought what better frame for my beans as they have come out from their little protective covers.

I have put some string to train them upwards. I tied the string to the plants - I'm not sure if this was the best of ideas but it seems to be working.

These are the peas about a month ago when they first poked their little heads up from the soil.
I let them grow for quite a while in the little pots as I read (after planting) that they don't transplant very well and should have been planted where they where to grow (whoops!)
However I was confident that if I was gentle they would be fine.

I have now transplanted them and done the same string trick as with the beans and they seem to be very happy and growing beautifully!

The variety of pea I have is called Poppet a dwarf variety. I have never grown peas before and I'm not sure if I've ever known anyone to either so I am very excited by the prospect of these little guys!

I started to put mirrors up around the shadier parts of the garden to give some of the plants in these areas a boost, but unfortunately (or not) one of these mirrors smashed so I have used them to hide the ugly breeze vlock at the top of the wall. Just got to wait for some more to break and I can finish it...

yesterday rubbish, today infinite possibilities!

What can you do with an old, broken laundry basket with a big bit of wire sticking out the top?

Cut off the wire...

Find some scabby sprouting potatoes in the back of a cupboard...

Get the boyfriend to do some heavy lifting...

And hope for the best!

a slow couple of weeks...

...but here's an update of the few things I'v done and what's been growing (and what hasn't).


The Pea Beans that I planted weeks ago, and that I had almost given up on, finally raised their little head, getting rapidly bigger and quite amusing they looked too!

 

Two little bean plants on the left with lettuce I planted at the same time.

A close up of the little bean plant.

Once the pea beans were a little bigger and I had a grand total of 3, I decided it was time for them to be planted out.

I was a bit worried about the cold as they are still quite small but I needed the space in the greenhouse (!) so I have recreated the greenhouse feel for them in the ground, using some old bottles. At the same time I planted out the asparagus lettuce, I tried to separate them all but I got bored so I left some in clumps. However, reading about this type of lettuce just now, I realise that they are going to grow quite big so I may need to thin/eat some of the clumps.

The lettuce with an eggshell defence and the pea bean plants in their little bottle guards.

I had just planted the lettuce out and watered it so they all fell over but they are looking much healthier now.

Planting

A short update today. I have planted out some of my seeds: dobby's beetroot, giant improved flack (?) carrot, asparagus lettuce and clarke's beltony blue pea. These are all heritage seed varieties, which means they are no longer on the commercial seed register so the seeds have to be obtained by swapping or membership to the heritage seed library. I am very hopeful about all these lovely rare varieties of veg andfingres crossed I get at least one decent plant from each... but only time will tell.

I have also put a little path in around the pond to the compost bin and scattered some woodland wild flowers to attract bees and butterflies. Shady areas are so difficult to use for growing anything edible that they may as well be used for wildlife, and it is near the pond so it has definitely become the nature area.

When things have started to happen I will post up some photos, but today there will just be text.

trees and tadpoles: I am woman, hear me saw!

Yesterday was also the day of finally getting rid of the horrible overhanging conifer at the bottom of the garden, so the nature area can get some sunlight.
G has done a landscaping course and knows how to cut trees so she came round with her lovely bow saw and we got to work, with the lovely old neighbour's permission. I think he wanted us to chop the lot down but we would need safety gear for that which we didn't have. He did lend us a rope though, for one particularly tricky branch.

G hacking away!
I did get up on the garage roof too, but sadly no more photos were taken during the branch removal. 

...after the chop. 

We considered setting fire to this lovely pile but there is a slight risk of taking the out the fences, so a better option is to utilise the councils garden waste removal scheme and bag it up for collection, keeping the biggest bits of branch for a bonfire.

I am woman, hear me saw!!

trees and tadpoles: tadpoles

Yesterday, with the help of Kris and Wai we conducted a stealth mission to liberate some tadpoles from the science dept...

Admittedly a few of them were dead but its food for the others (I think). The living ones survived the cycle home, give them a bit of excitement in their young lives.

I let them acclimatise in the jar before releasing the into their new home.

 

Good Luck tadpoles - hope to see you again as frogs!

The garden

The weather has been amazing this past week so we have been hard at work in the garden, and it is now almost unrecognisable!

 this is what it looked like when I moved in.

The two laylandii on the left are now gone - Georgie chopped the trees down and Neil and I dug up the roots. I have extended the flower bed I am using old wine bottles to boarder the bed as most of the original wooden edging was rotten.

This currently looks like this

After raiding some recycling boxes last night we now have enough bottles to finish the bed. I saw this in a front garden nearby and thought it looked really cool so fingers crossed mine will too!

We pulled down the smaller of the two sheds last week (why anyone would need two is beyond me) we are now turning that space into a little nature area, which includes a pond! Much fun was had digging away but the actual creation of the pond was a little bit trial and error...

Neil and the hole. the pond (before)

 using some plastic sheeting we found as pond liner, note the hole...

 holding it down with gravel... cat fish

 looking good...

Unfortunately, this was as good as it looked. By Saturday morning there was merely a puddle left in the bottom ...

a swift visit to the garden centre to buy some real pond lining and now the pond looks like this

and I am happy to say that the water has stayed in there now for 3 days. Its a bit murky at the moment but that should settle. I bought some plants for my pond too..

fringed water-lilly , water mint, water forget-me-not, water avens, all English plants to attract lots of bees and butterflys.

You may be wondering what I did with all the soil we dug up, well in a corner of the garden there was a pile of old roof tiles that the previous owner forgot to skip - and as I'm very bad at throwing things away myself I thought I would recycle these tiles into a lovely raised bed.

I also used a couple of bits of the horrible york stone we ripped out of the front room when I moved in. This bed has now become the herb patch and is looking very pretty.

Back row: Sage, Rosemary, Clary Sage, Borage

Middle row: Bronze Fennel, 2 Florence Fennel, Curry Plant

Front row: County Cream Oregano, French Tarragon, Thyme (can't remember what variety) and Roman Camomile.

Rubbish to lush

So this is a place where i can put my projects... recycling rubbish I've hoarded into something useful, or decorative - but always lush!