I'm still here

Hello everyone. I'm still here, just got carried away with things and neglected my blog a little too long. 

Spring has most definitely sprung where I am. In the pattern of the last few years it seems like April showers don't exist any more as we've had a lot of sunshine so far. I've already been wearing my sun cream as I'm pretty much a vampire and I go crispy surprisingly fast. The dogs overheat quickly too, and I'm able to get some lovely dopey photos of them in the sun:

Darcy

Jess

This is a photo of the lawn:

It looks a lot more like a desert at the moment. The dogs have killed most of the grass and it's been so dry it's all cracked. Sam is quite happy with it now, as he absolutely hates mowing, but I'm thinking of sowing some grass seeds and trying to keep the dogs (and the birds!) off it for a while.

I've been busy making wedding plans so I'm behind on planting this year. I've planted some seeds today, tomatoes, broad beans, peas, mixed salad, basil, and beetroot. I need to get some potatoes ready too. I don't know how many will germinate as the seeds are all pretty old now, but I'd rather use them up before I buy new ones.

What have you got growing at the moment?

Veg box trial

So apparently autumn is upon us already. It's been really windy and wet here (interspersed with the odd bizarre summer day) and the leaves are falling. All of my container grown potatoes have been dug up and stored away, and I only have a few carrots left in the pots. I have two apple trees but they only managed three apples and two of those blew off in the wind, so I'm not doing very well on the fruit front. They are only recently planted though and the dogs did eat all the lower branches so they've done quite well to survive at all. I'm hoping to build some raised beds next year and get more planted in the ground rather than pots.

I've been thinking about trying a veg box until I get better at growing my own, and after reading this post at Useless Beauty Designs I decided to try a box from Able and Cole. They deliver in my area every Friday and apparently my driver is named Dave, I didn't get to check that though as he had come and gone before I got up this morning. I ordered the small fruit and veg box which is suggested for 1 or 2 people.

 
My partner Sam almost stepped on it on his way out of the door at 8 o'clock! The box was a bit soggy at it's been raining, if I keep getting boxes I might have to build a shelter for them to be left in... 

Inside the box I got potatoes, carrots, sweetcorn, broccoli, onions, apples, plums, and grapefruit, and a bonus snail, but luckily he hadn't had time to munch on anything!

 
The box I chose has fairly basic veg in it, but Sam is not very adventurous yet so that's ok for now. They do have other boxes which promise more exotic choices. I haven't decided yet if I will keep having the boxes. On the plus side they contain mainly organic fruit and veg, they don't support a supermarket chain, they are delivered in re-usable and recyclable packaging, and I don't have to leave the house to get them! On the negative side they are more expensive than normal shop bought stuff. 

Hmmm..... decisions.......

D.I.Y and rude veg

Yesterday I put up a shelf in the kitchen. It's blog worthy because like most things I do I made it up as I went along. The shelf was found with a bunch of others up the loft when we emptied it a few weeks ago, the brackets were about 60p each and the screws and wall plugs were conveniently already in the tool box. I don't own a spirit level so I balanced a measuring jug with some water in on the shelf with one hand while I drew under it with a pencil. I marked the screw holes with the pencil through the brackets. Luckily I estimated the electrics correctly and managed to avoid death and electricians bills. The shelf is now housing my cookbook, scales, flour, and alcohol. It looks straight to me, which is good enough.

I'm going to put another shelf over the draining board when I get some more brackets. At the moment a clock lives there that always ran five minutes slow no matter which batteries it had, it's now showing an entirely different time zone so it's going in favour of useful surface space. I salvaged a clothes rail from a broken wardrobe in the garage so that's going under the next shelf for towels.

I've also been harvesting more carrots from the garden, and the first of the potatoes, although I didn't water them enough to get an impressive size. I often give my dogs some fruit or veg instead of dog treats so now every time I pull some carrots they assume they're getting some.

Last but not least, my very first rude vegetable. Pulled up on sunday and photographed for my amusement, and now yours!

Carrots and blackcurrants

Yesterday I thinned the carrots out. Some actually look like carrots now, and some are microscopic still.

My favourite was this guy who looked like a pair of legs:

The largest ones I washed and nibbled on, they were carrot-y but I don't think they were quite ready to be eaten yet. I gave those to the dogs who don't care what they eat. The others went in the compost bin. I thought the foliage looked quite pretty though, so I put it in a vase. I don't have any flowers to add so it looks a little eccentric:

The dogs like it though!

I've also been picking blackcurrants off the bush at the bottom of the garden. It's been there for aaaaages and pretty much looks after itself. 

I found out that Jess likes blackcurrants too. As I was picking them off the tops of the branches she was eating the ones lower down! 

Got quite a few so I might attempt making jam....

How is the veg doing so far?

Sooooo, I've not actually got anything planted 'in' the garden yet. All my veg is either in pots/planters or still too small to leave the seedling pots. I have taken over nearly half the patio with my pots though:

I've still got 3 half egg boxes of seed potatoes I haven't found room/compost for yet. I may try putting them in the ground when I start digging it over (radical idea I know). My potato pots have multiplied since the last time you saw them:

The tomatoes are still struggling on. Mine look so pathetic a friendly relative has donated some of her spares. The sweetcorn (bought from B&Q) was very disappointing, I've only managed to get about 10 to germinate from the entire packet. I also have one butternut squash and some cabbages on the go (again, relatives donations). 

 

My peas and broad beans are ready to go in the ground, I just need to prepare a patch.

Unfortunately the garden is very much a neglected space. This is the area where I want the veg beds to be, next to the compost bins:

On the other side of the path you can hardly see is the area I want to keep chickens on should I ever get round to sorting it out:

Lastly some help of you don't mind? I have an old toilet sitting in the garden. It never made it to the tip for some reason and I'd like to plant something in it so it looks useful. Can anyone give me ideas of what I can plant in it that won't mind the lack of drainage (except the pipe from the u-bend)? Edible or otherwise.

More seeds and spuds

The weather has been great today, sunshine and blue skies. For the first half of the week I've been slowly slogging through a spring clean of each room, I was going to do the spare room today but I couldn't resist the chance to stand in the sunshine and get my hands mucky instead. I've spent a few (hopefully) productive hours planting some more broad beans, re-potting the surviving tomatoes, and starting off peas, sweetcorn, rocket, and potatoes. I've also re-potted the aloe vera plants that live indoors, hopefully that won't upset them, I have no luck with house plants. 

For some reason the tomatoes are struggling already, these are the only ones left now, so I've put them in the greenhouse to fend for themselves:

For most of the seeds I've used toilet roll inserts again as it easy to pot them up when the time comes. The rocket is in a windowsill type box outside, I've found that rocket grows best if it's given absolutely no love or attention, so I'm just going to ignore that and see what happens. 

At the moment I've got 3 pots with potatoes in them, I've also got a few old bins that just need drainage holes drilling and then they can be planted up too. I'm also experimenting with growing potatoes in the empty bags from last years compost. I've never tried doing it that way before but I've seen others doing it. 

Another experiment is one of the dog's empty food sacks, it's made of sturdy paper so I'm not sure how long it'll survive outside. There's always the danger of the dog dragging it away because it smells of food....

 

Speaking of naughty dogs, this is the sight we woke up to this morning:

We gave him a couple of old cushions on tuesday, they lasted a whole two days before he ate them. *sigh*

A bit behind, some odds and sods

Once again, I've failed to blog for a while. I haven't really had any inspiration to blog, as I haven't done much of anything. I've been feeling really down over the last few weeks, maybe it's a bit of S.A.D, but the days are getting longer, so I should be cheering up now, not getting gloomier. (I can't type that word without a picture of Eeyore popping into my head, everyone likes a manic depressive donkey right?)

Anyway, there was a highlight last week, when I came downstairs and opened the front curtains to see a sparrowhawk sat in the front garden eating the remains of a blackbird. 

The overwhelming response I got when I've shown people the photos I took was "poor blackbird" but I thought the sparrowhawk was beautiful, and it's the first time I've seen one so close. It just sat there under my front wall while people were strolling past on the pavement, probably wondering why there was a crazy women in a dressing gown clutching a camera... It finally flew off with the rest of it's breakfast when a noisy Argos van pulled up and spooked it, haven't seen it since. 

I've also tried out a recipe I found on this blog for beer bread. I don't actually like beer, I was mostly just curious to see what it was like. It seemed to turn out ok from the recipe:

It tasted really sweet while you chewed it, and left a beer aftertaste when you swallowed. Quite strange. I decided I definitely don't like beer though, so I don't think I'll be making that one again.

Lastly an update on the plants. The broad beans are now out in the greenhouse and doing ok, despite being quite leggy. I'm going to start off the remainder of that packet sometime in the next week and see how they go. The tomatoes however are not doing so well, they're in the porch as it's cooler than the rest of the house and I don't think they'd survive in the greenhouse yet (6 panes of glass missing). After the first re-potting about half of them just died. I may have to buy baby tom plants later in the year, depending on how the rest survive... I also need to go through the seed packets again and start some more things off, the peas may be ok to plant now for a start.

I'll try to get back to some kind of productivity anyway, wish me luck.

Baby plants

Well I'm a bit behind on blogging, haven't had the chance to do much at all over the last few days as I've been ill for a week and a half. I've had one of those 24 hours sickness bugs but at the same time caught a chest infection and the combination has had me in bed for about 3 days straight, and then useless for the rest of the time.  *sigh*

Anyway, I can give you an update on the seeds I planted, that were featured in the previous post. They started showing signs of life a week ago, and have now fully exploded.

 

  

 

The potatoes on the other hand, don't look a whole lot different to me at the moment, but they won't be planted out for a while yet, especially as we keep having snow!

First seeds are in

Today I've planted my first seeds of the year into a windowsill propagator (£1.99 in B&M's bargain!). I braved the cold long enough to retrieve the seed compost from the broken greenhouse outside, but where I actually did today's sowing was the living room floor in front of the fire! I used newspaper to protect the carpet:

 

In the black plastic seedling trays in the right of the propagator are my three tomato varieties, Money Maker, Golden Nugget, and Gardner's Delight. Those were the last of the tomato seeds from last year, so I hope they're still alive. In the left side of the propagator I've stood toilet roll tubes with the bottoms folded to hold the compost, they've each got one broad bean planted in them. I prefer to start things like peas and beans in the card tubes, I find it easier to plant them out when they've grown with less disturbance that way.

 

I've also had 3 egg boxes (6 halves) full of seed potatoes sitting about to chit for the last couple of weeks. I decided to buy the variety Maris Piper, as it's the kind I buy from the supermarkets. It's a good all rounder, and I hate new potatoes so I'm not planting any. 

 

 

 

I can't plant anything else now until I've sorted out the greenhouse and found my other propagator and seedling pots, they're in there somewhere!