What with all this rain and sunshine, the veggie patch is look a bit crazy at the moment. There’s been a lot going on this past fortnight and I haven’t touched it. The weeds are doing pretty well too…:(

Firstly, we put the house on the market and then we accepted an offer and then we had to drive the length and breadth of britain to buy a new land rover so we’ve been running around like headless chickens but all in a good way, it just feels as though everything’s happening at once. Still, can’t complain but I think the veggies know that they’ve got to hurry up and start fruiting because they don’t know if the new owners will take care of them!

Sincerely hoping that we get some fruits of our labours before we move out. So this weekend, I’m going to start potting up various things in the ornamental borders that will divide or I’ve told them we’re taking (a beautiful burgandy scabious that was given as a present a few weeks ago for instance). Also all the veggie seedlings that I’d normally prick out will be potted on and we’ll fill the mother-in-law’s veggie patches. Doubtful they’ll survive in her hands and I suspect they will get forgotten about but worth a try and happy to eat my words… plus got to get all the pots moved over to my mother’s patio so they’ll be looked after – probably better than I would knowing her!

The hanging baskets are doing OK, they’ve not really started to flower properly yet but they’ve bedded down and filled out so I’m pretty impressed so far.

But with selling comes buying the next place and we’ve been to see a couple so far and it makes me think about three things:

1 it is surprising how little taste people have (in the house or garden)

2 what is the point of a front garden?

3 why aren’t new build houses built with a tray underneath the garden to collect the water?

Not proposing to expand much more on that but we went round what used to be a lovely ironstone property the other evening and the garden was ridiculous, not to mention the appaling way the house had been looked after. The mother of the owner lived two doors away and I could just tell that she’d be sticking her nose in anytime we changed anything and seeing as the first thing I’d be doing is getting the JCB in to clear all the paving and bricks walling out, I don’t think we’d be too popular. Hey ho, we won’t be going for a second viewing!

Off to see somewhere with a big garden at the weekend, so will keep you posted!

 

Last year I went a bit potty over vegetables and would eagerly rush home from work to see what had popped up or grown another inch in the patch and I can honestly say that this year I have only got worse. The list of vegetables has grown and this weekend I’m ripping out some buddlejas so that Frank can build me some more raised beds for the courgettes and I’m still to find somewhere to put the tomatoes!

I’m growing everything from seed – partly for £££ but also because of my other obsession – propagators!

I’ve put a list below of everything that we’ve planted and I’m in the process of drawing up a layout but will have to add that in later. You’ll have to pardon the latin and speech marks but I’m practising for my RHS course!…

This year, we’ve adjusted quantities and spread the sowing intervals to hopefully give us a broader spectrum of fresh veg and also a wider variety. I anticipate my library of recipe books become rather more thumbed as the season progresses. I also need to invest in more freezer bags!

Even Frank has got more involved (historically his gardening has consisted of ‘pruning’ with a chainsaw and hedging with the viscious petrol cutters - no criticsm intended but I do turn into something resembling a nervous mother seeing her child play football near the family heirlooms) and he did a fair bit of the sowing and built the new frame for the beans – none of the preparation or decision making I hasten to add! He tinkers with the Landy, I tinker with the veg patch.

Our garden at one time must have been agricultural land as it is ridiculously fertile (plus I keep growing beans which fix nitrogen) and free-draining. It has a rather dry crumbly feel on the surface and the lumps break when you squeeze them between a finger and thumb to produce quite a fine dust. When I tested it at college it is apparently a sandy clay loam with a very slightly alkaline pH. However, everything apart from Irises seems to flourish with little added nutrition from me. The whole garden is on a slope with little shade in the summer so I’d never plant ferns and the like but vegetable gardening is a breeze compared to the veg patches we had as children.

As I said, in addition to the patch, we’re building some small raised beds for the courgettes and I will probably resort to the tumbling variety of tomatoes and they can go in hanging baskets somewhere – god knows where!. Other than that the only other thing we’ve built is a lean-to frame for the tallest climbing beans – last year the canes kept being pulled over due to the weight of the plant and the light soil – and we’ve used a few shorter cane wigwams and a randomly found wrought iron one for the less vigorous and dwarf beans/peas. We’re going to put a step-over chicken wire fence around the main patch to stop the cat litter tray scenario. For the record Silent Roar didn’t help in our case and the plants’ leaves move so keep setting off the battery sonic alarms and so they run out after a week or two. So we’ve gone back to basics and are hoping it won’t look too dreadful!

 That’s it for now, I’ll take a photo or two at the weekend and hopefully finish the layout drawing so you can see what it going to look like – it feels like we’ve managed to squeeze a quart into a pint pot but fingers crossed it might just work… anyhow, here’s the list:

Thompson & Morgan
Zea mays Lark F1 hybrid (sweetcorn)
Cynara cardunculus ‘Green Globe’ (globe artichoke)
Vicia faba ‘Jubilee Hysor’ (broad bean)
Phaseolus vulgaris ‘Blauhilde’ (purple climbing bean)
Phaseolus vulgaris ‘Nomad’ (dwarf green bean)
Phaseolus vulgaris ‘Sonesta’ (dwarf yellow bean)
Pisum sativum ‘Cascadia’ (sugar snap pea)
Pisum sativum ‘Rondo’ (climbing pod pea)
Pisum sativum ‘Norli’ (mangetout pea)
Spinacia oleracea ‘Tetona’ F1 (spinach)
Eruca vesicaria ‘Arugula’ (rocket)
Pastinaca sativa ‘Gladiator’ F1 (parsnip)
Dauca carotta ‘Nigel’ F1 (carrot)

Mr Fothergill’s
Vicia faba ‘Bunyard’s Exhibition’ (broad bean)
Brassica olefacea italica (purple sprouting brocolli)
Curcubita pepo ‘Sunburst’ F1 (yellow pattipan)
Valerianella locusta ‘Valentin’ (lamb’s lettuce)
Lactuca ‘New Red Fire’, ‘Butter Crunch’, ‘Funly’ and ’Little Gem’ (not sure about the latin names on this!)

Taylors
Allium sativum ‘Hercules’ F1 (strong white onion)
Allium sativum ‘Red Baron’ (red onion)
Allium sativum sativum (garlic)

 

I suppose I’d better start with an apology – I seriously have no idea where the last month or so has gone! While I may have been somewhat lacking in attention to my updates, I certainly have not been neglecting the garden…

Yesterday we put the house on the market and I have to say that I am now glad that I went quite so far over winter with the pruning because the main beds are needing very little attention. There’s an odd bit to prune, where something’s shot off at a tangent and the inevitable weeds but really my main focus has been on bringing on seeds/seedlings and my vegetable patch. I’ll deal with the latter in a separate post but I’m very excited about all the produce so in a weird sort of way, I hope we don’t sell before I can reap some of the benefits!

I hunted out Grandpa’s old propagator and bought a couple of covered seed trays and have been bringing on some bedding plants – cosmos, petunias, lobelia and the like – annuals are not something I generally bother with but thought it was worth it for the viewings. And also very useful for starting off the more tricky/fragile vegetables. I’ve even sown lobelia and surfinia for the hanging baskets, although not convinced how well they will do…

At the moment, the window sills are covered with more lobelia and cosmos (having planted the first lot out, we then did a practical session at college on seed sowing!) and yellow and green courgette seeds but they haven’t poked their heads through yet.

I also have an apology to make. I resorted to using a selective weedkiller last weekend. Next door neighbour is very nice but the garden has not been touched by either him or the previous neighbour so the weeds are abundant and constantly spread. I’m not bothered about picking out whatever comes across, but it’s getting too much now and the dandelions are popping up all over the lawn. Also there is an unidentified perennial spreading weed that attracts greenfly so although I’m hanging my head in shame I admit, I did spray some perennial weeds…is it better to do that once a year than resort to insecticide on several occassions throughout the year? Not sure and I’m sure there are organic solutions but on this occassion convenience and speed were the deal breakers.

So, the garden has come on leaps and bounds and I’ll take some photos at the weekend and post them too.

We’re likely to be on the market for a long time so at least we’ll be able to enjoy all the hard work for a bit longer. Hoping to buy somewhere with a bigger garden next!

Will post more on the veggie patch later on…

I have been composting now for quite a while with varying degrees of success. But I love doing it, it reminds me of Granny and Grandpa and is the ultimate in recycling, something else I could get on my soap box about if it wasn’t being used to hold newspapers. However, I thought things were possibly going a little far when the wooden frame itself started degrading, so having mourned the loss of my old Heath Robinson pallet set-up I set about looking on the internet for a new one.

Not only did I find out that ready made composters are really expensive but they’re enormous and one of the difficulties of having a small garden is that there just isn’t anywhere to put everything. But anyway that’s not what I wanted to write about.

Composting. I knew mother (possibly the one person more potty about composting than me!) had got her containers through her council so I rang Melton Borough Council and asked ‘Customer Services’ if they were part of the composting scheme and could I get a composter through them. ‘No’, seriously that was all she said. Evidently I am not a customer they wish to serve so I thanked her profusely for her help and returned to the internet. At least Google does its best to help. And then Eddie Izzard popped into my head…

The wave of enthusiasm riding through the UK at the moment is absolutely fantastic, and I couldn’t be more thrilled that the government has actually done something so simple and easy that actually makes a difference. I don’t often speak up in favour of any political party but this scheme rocks! So I’m urging everyone to make the most of http://www.recyclenow.com/ I got a new composter and a little lidded box for the kitchen for only £9 including delivery!!! It took a few weeks but I was so excited when I came home from work and it was sitting there outside my front door (we live in a very honest little village).

So it is nestled in place of my old one. Granted it isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as my moss covered wooden one (Frank thinks it looks like a darlek) but it also doesn’t allow everything to spill out either so that’s got to be a bonus.

Anyhow, I spent this weekend with friends so only had about half an hour in the garden when I got back before the clouds started dumping buckets of water on me, so very little to report. But luckily the evenings are getting lighter and I’ll be able to get outside more during the week soon.

Oh, one thing to report though, I just took delivery of nemasys today. Together we will fight against slugs and snails and this is one battle we are going to win!

By the time we’d finished undoing all the bad workmanship on the house, redesigned the garden and started climbing the self-sufficiency learning curve, I was in search of a new project.

I’ve always been a serial course starter. Never finding a course that I could really get my teeth into and consequently got bored and stopped going. I’ve tried everything from Spanish, to photography, to kick boxing and yoga (well I have kept the last one up at least). I think the problem has always been that I’ve gone to local colleges etc and picked from their syllabus rather than actually figuring out what course I wanted to do and finding somewhere that does it.

So with my rejuvenated obsession with gardening, I began to realise that my knowledge was most definitely lacking. I’ve got a strong biological sciences background so can often make an educated guess but (and I’m slightly ashamed to say this) I didn’t know the difference between a perennial and a biennial and all those other gardening terms and I was beginning to appreciate that this was quite a hindrance…

Where I live there is an agricultural college over the cattle grid and low and behold, they operate the RHS horticulture courses!

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Learning/Education/exams.htm

Somehow, I managed to get the very last place on the course that started in September 2007. Six months down the line and I’m proud to say I’m still going and loving it. I was a bit apprehensive about going in to a class of people that would know everything about plants (my ability to identify plants is minimal to say the least) and that I’d be out of my depth. Yes, there are times when I hang back and try not to look the tutors in the eye in case they ask me a question (normally when we are identifying plants each week!) but 95% of the time the lessons are hard enough to hold my interest but not so far over my head that I’m floundering. Like most things, some of my classmates excel in areas that I don’t and some I excel in that they don’t, so it’s happy equilibrium really.

I would thoroughly recommend the course, in fact, I’m trying to convince my mother to do it! It’s great for anyone that’s genuinely interested in gardening and wants to either cement their knowledge or learn more about areas they’re not so sure about.

I’m starting at level 2, which is roughly a GCSE and the syllabus can be found at:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/85C8454D-68AD-47C0-A506-8944BE880078/0/level2syllabus.pdf

It takes 18 months the way I’m doing it (one night a week) so it’s a long term committment but each week I’m glad I went – even on those dark and dreary winter nights when I’m doing battle with my brain and not wanting to leave the fire! But many of my classmates come from up to 20 miles away so I can’t complain when it’s literally on my doorstep…

Most days we’re in a classroom but occassionally we go over to the glass houses to do cuttings, grafting etc. And in the lighter evenings we walk outside looking at the plants in the grounds of the college.

If you don’t have to work full-time or can organise a day off a week, I would recommend doing a daytime course as it means you can get out and about and see plants in situ in the daylight! Initially, I thought I’d go on to do Level 3 and then the Masters… we’ll see how the exams go in Feb 09 I think!

When we moved in, we inherited a ‘low maintenance’ garden but like everything in the house, nothing had been done properly and the plant selections and execution were interesting to say the least. Having started with grand plans about excavating a seating area and building a garden room, I calmed down a bit and we set about making it into a cottage garden. The house is a mid-terrace 1880’s cottage so we thought this would suit and it’s our style of garden so sounded like a good plan.

Now, Frank is not a gardener but he is extremely useful. He’s got a construction company that builds one-off individual houses so has every piece of equipment and tool under the sun and can pretty much turn his hand to anything. Plus before he started his company, he used to lay cricket wickets at all the major ECB grounds – Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, The Oval etc etc. So, I knew we’d have a nice lawn! I traded him some of my time helping at one of the site gardens for some time helping me at home…

We smashed up a vile concrete path that ran the length of the garden and set about removing bricks that the previous owner had put EVERYWHERE! We filled two skips and by the end of it I was knackered. I then set about removing all the weed membrane (which hadn’t been put in properly and consequently was covered in weeds!) and about a ton of gravel.

Then came the fun part.

We marked out three large beds that made the most of the width of the garden and helped to demarcate it into areas. There isn’t a lot of room so we needed to make the most of every inch. And we settled on a theme for each bed. One is yellow/red/orange, one is blue/purple/white and one is red/pink/purple. Well in theory anyhow…

 

We left the decking in place as it seemed to be fairly solid and is useful for bbqs etc so we put a small herb garden at the side of that (where the path had run past) and put a gravelled area at the back, for a log store, storing the bbq and somewhere for Frank to load/unload the defender. Probably not sounding too cottagey but we are practical people!

I then spent a week to-ing and fro-ing between the two nurseries (definitely NOT garden centres) that I am lucky enough to have within quarter of a mile of the house, bringing back probably ten car loads of plants. Seventh heaven.

The pics are of the beds after about a month. I threw in some petunias to give a bit of colour to start with while everything got established. You’ll see I have loaded the plants up – I can’t bear bare soil and it keeps the weeds down and the cats off!

Over winter, I’ve pruned everything back so it doesn’t get too overgrown this summer and looking at these pictures, I can’t wait for all the shrubs to come back into leaf and flower. There’s one bit of the bottom bed that hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped, mostly because it has inherited plants in it, that I was reluctant to get remove (I passed any healthy plants I didn’t want on to friends). But I’ll probably just leave as is. We’re hopefully moving this year or next and it seems a bit of a waste as it’s not a part of the garden we stop and linger in so I can cope with that!

In 2007 I started the potentially long journey towards self-sufficiency. The garden is pretty small, so no livestock  – plus there are no real boundaries between the seven gardens in our street so I don’t think chickens nipping in and out of people’s back doors would go down very well! So, I set up a ’small’ veg patch - some people have an acre, I’ve got a 4×2.5 m rectangle. Can’t complain but it’s not exactly going to save the world’s food shortages.

Even though the soil is really workable, free-draining and fertile, after four hours of weeding, the dream of a small holding was fast becoming a nightmare.

I would like to state for the record that I now know that you don’t have to pain-stakingly remove all traces of annual weeds but I was ignorant. Something you will come to accept about me if you keep reading. As I said in my biography (if you can find it, I have no idea where it’s gone and frankly, you’re not missing much) I tend to leave the thorough research for after the event… curses.

Hey ho, I went to bed knackered and aching and just a little bit sun burnt (yes, unlike those people that actually know what they’re doing I was preparing my veg plot in early summer, that brief week before the heaven’s remained permamently open). I was feeling smart-arsed that I had turned an overgrown mess into a zen-like garden of wavy raked earth…

I awoke early on Sunday morning, kicked Frank out to work, desperately keen to get on and sort out my bamboo wigwams and plants some seeds to find the zen patch was now, in all honesty, a cat toilet. With the sun already getting warm, the smell was something else.

The proverbial bubble had been popped and I commenced a new battle with the neighbours cats. For the record (will stop doing this ‘for the record stuff’ soon) i adore all creatures great and small and especially my neighbour’s cats. One of which has, incidentally, moved in with us. I just don’t like their poo. Particularly when it’s where I want to grow something that is going to end up in my mouth.

So I am now the proud owner of some sonic cat repellers and half a ton of Silent Roar (will let you know if that works!).

Anyhow, another piping hot sunny day passed all too quickly and aside from developing a rather fetching spider’s web of strap marks, my wigwams were up, and my veg were planted. When I can remember to make a note, I’ll let you know what I planted but the main things I’ve taken away from last year’s crop were:

• Blauhilde climbing beans are delicious, productive and have a long season – definitely planting them this year. Although I do wish they would stay their glorious purple when cooked.
• Broad beans are possibly the nicest beans to grow and eat fresh – will start posting recipes when I get a chance…
• Yellow pattipans are delicious straight from the patch, cut in half and slung flesh down on the bbq and are enthusiastically productive
• Butternut squash take up loads of room (I don’t have much space) and I only got three, will pursue that squash when we move.
• I grew far too many different beans and didn’t sow my salads in fortnightly successions – i just couldn’t be bothered – will be this year!

So that’s that. What followed was a weekend love affair with my vegetables and my alarmingly large selection of cookery books as we searched for new recipes to use up the vegetables.

That pretty much brings you up to date. As you can see, I’m winging it a bit but I’m not afraid of hard work. In fact Frank was only telling me off the other day for the way I just throw myself at things (not literally, I don’t have a problem). As usual, he’s right. I’m still aching four days after dismantling a snail sanctuary masquerading as a brick raised bed. Personally I’m blaming the recent tetanus vaccination but there we go.

Look, let’s get this straight. Right from the start. I’m not a trained gardener or horticulturalist. This is about me, my trials and my (many) errors in my little garden. I probably, no, definitely do not worship ‘best’ practice, preferring to take a cursory glance at a book and then suck it and see, leaving the indepth reading and note taking until it hasn’t worked and I’m left scratching my head as to why the garden has not been spotted by RHS Wisley as a potential show garden.

My gardening CV started it’s rocky path as a child digging over huge clay vegetable patches in the rain, collecting self propagating leaves in an acre of garden (by hand!) and being the smallest child having to crop the currant/gooseberry/other prickly fruit bushes in the fruit cage, while trying to a) not impale myself and b) not touch the inevitable trapped and madly flapping bird and c) identify the tingly sour fruit from the luscious juicy ones!

I then hit adolescence and abandoned anything my parents enjoyed with a humph! Gardening was now a chore I openly despised, while sneaking the odd admiring glance at my Grandpa’s runner beans and my mother’s exquisite troughs giving the podgy prehistoric looking plants a secretive prod.

School and university passed and a severe (near-fatal) loss of common sense saw me living in London for five years before I managed to give myself a good kick up the backside and get outta there.

Now, living an attempt at the rural idyll and thoroughly loving it. Our little cottage is just that. Little. The other half is out working 7 days a week, 51 and a half weeks of the year so that leaves me in peace to garden to my heart’s content.

I work full time with a team organising a huge horse trials and love my job but do relish the holidays to get my grubby fingers in the soil!

So that’s me, hopefully I can keep this up to date and see how things progress from there!