Gone With The Wind..

So the last week of March was pretty rotten weather wise. Mother Nature and I had a difference of opinion about wind speeds and sadly I think I lost the argument! 

Earlier in the month I put up a large mini greenhouse (affectionately knows as Blowaways on various gardening forums!) and for much of the month it survived. It had a couple of bad nights which knocked the trays of the staging shelf, but nothing that a spot of re-sowing couldn't fix. Sadly the really high winds last week were just too much for it in the end and took the cover clean off, bending several poles in the process. It can be salvaged, but for now it's bits on the grass.

Now had there been just a few bits in there then I wouldn't have minded, but just the day before I'd filled up the table with freshly sown trays of lettuce, marigold, catnip, sweet peas and nasturtiums. I managed to rescue as much as I could, and then stuff the cover in the shed (no easy task in mild hurricane strength wind, I can tell you!), but no sooner had I turned my back then the cat dashed out to pee on all the spilled soil. All hopes of saving the soil were dashed and I honestly felt like crying that morning! 

After a few days of me standing at the kitchen window muttering and cursing the wind, I pulled myself together and formulated a plan. I'd been looking at plans for cold frames on Pinterest (like you do!) and came across one made from stacked bricks and a sheet of glass. No nails, no wood and very minimal work. Splendid! As it happened my neighbour had the door of an old green house at the bottom of his garden and an ever growing pile of bricks left over from his house renovation, both of which he was quite happy for me to have. So once the wind died down, I set too and cobbled together a rather rustic looking cold frame to protect the few trays that survived the wind and sowed a few extra flowers for good measure.

It's by no means perfect, but for now it's doing the job. The Husboond has agreed to building a more robust wooden cold frame some time in the future, but as he has about a thousand other things to do first, I shan't hold my breath for it this year! 

Anyhoos, other garden news is that the first row of peas has been sown direct along with radishes and some chard. I have a tray of peas in the cold frame, but they won't be planted out for a couple of weeks. The onions a sprouting well under fleece so in a few weeks I'll uncover those and I managed to get the spuds in as well. The Bean Bed (or the bed for things that fit in anywhere) has been marked out and I've started to dig it, but as it's the Easter weekend, the weather has predictably turned cold and wet which is scuppering my plans for digging, lest I fancy being knee deep in sticky mud! I'm hoping it will pick up over the next few days as at this rate it'll be May and it still won't be dug. The Root Bed needs digging too, but that's at the bottom of my list at the moment as I still need to get some sand to add to my rather claggy Fenland soil (although we did have some good straight carrots last year, so there's still hope!). 

Onto the indoor seedlings then..

 

Tomatoes are growing well, I'm probably going to give half of these away as realistically they won't all fit in the big mini greenhouse when I put it back up later in the year.

The courgettes are also going like the clappers. In hindsight I think I've sown these far too early and they'll have to go in the greenhouse too. Luckily I have plenty of those potato growing bags, so they can get planted up and stood outside when it's warm enough.

Others than that it's just flowers growing indoors for now (I shall spare you all the blurry photos of tiny seedlings). Hollyhocks, geranium and phlox, hopefully to plant in a border. Later in the month (or in May) I'll be sowing cosmos, Nigella (or my favourite name, Love-in-a-Mist), rudbeckia and a seed mix called fairy bouquet which I am happy to admit that I bought for the name alone! 

Oh, on the subject of flowers, Chops' school sunflower has finally sprouted! He has the option to grow it at home or in the class garden so we may or may not get to see how tall it grows. We will have plenty of sunflowers at home anyway so I may encourage him to take it into school. 

So that's all there is for now, it's looking like it's dry for now so I'm off to hobbit about in the garden while I can!

New Shoots (or a vague attempt to blog my garden progress again)

Crikey, it seems to be quite some time since I wrote a blog.. Several years in fact!

So since 2011 there have been changes a'plenty. We left Longstanton and the Allotment (that never really got going haha!) and moved back to Sunny Peterborough. Where we had a eventful year there with job changes,  pregnancy, house break ins and then more job changes!

All that led up to us to moving to semi rural East Cambridgeshire, several days before Christmas 2012. We settled in a nice big (rented) house with a very shady east facing garden so for the first time in 6 years I didn't grow a single vegetable! In reality I wouldn't have had time for growing that year as our latest edition to the family (Tiny) arrived mid April and took up considerable amounts of my time.

Not being ones to stay put for long, we some how managed to start house hunting that summer, only this time it was for our very own house to buy! We viewed the grand total of three houses in the village and luckily for us the third one was just what we were looking for. So offers were put in and accepted (after some faffing) and after another 6 months we finally moved into Number 47, a post war ex-council house. Now we knew the house needed work, but what really sold it to me was the 30m of west facing garden. The bottom half of which is in full sun for the whole day!

So did I grow masses of fruit and vegetables in 2014? Did I heck!! We spent most of last year sorting out he inside of the house on the smallest budget ever. We're nowhere near finished but it's now in a state where I can get on with Other Things.

Which brings us up to date and to new blogging adventures as 2015 is the Year of the Garden.

The garden's original owner had been a prolific grower and the whole garden had been used for vegetables. Sadly for me the chap we bought the house from had laid it mostly to lawn and what little space that had been left for growing got very weedy lady year (although I did manage to grow a few shallots and raspberries!).

So that's the before photos. You can just make out the old growing space on the right too, although sadly the old baking tray (iPad) doesn't take the best of photos! The whopping great big leylandii was in fact 3 trees, I say was as they were cut down at he beginning of March, and boy what a difference that made (to the bank balance too!). 

Going...

Going...

Almost there....

Gone!

So with the trees gone I started digging, weeding, digging, weeding ect, ect, ect. At the end of March the plot is now looking more like a growing space and less like a post apocalyptic wasteland!

Ah, the lovely building site look of weed suppressant mat! I'll take some more photos later in the week as I've now planted in four beds and will hopefully be digging out the middle ones over Easter.

So I'll leave it there so now, as there isn't much else to show off (plus the wind took out the big mini green house last night and I need to try and salvage it's remains!), and hopefully will blog a bit more frequently from now on!

A picture is worth a thousand words...

Well, kind of.

So this is my progress so far. Under my craftily erected (*snigger*) pigeon defence there is kale and more kale. I had hoped to plant a bit more, but The Great Manure Delivery has been somewhat delayed and so the soil isn't really fit for planting.

This kale went in after I spotted a local stable selling some manure so I managed to get a bag in the ground last Saturday. Helped by my lovely friend Liz too, which always makes going to the plot a bit more enjoyable.

I have been assured that the black stuff will be delivered on Friday afternoon, so today Project Manager Chops and I will be going up this afternoon (and probably tomorrow too) to dig over the bed for the leeks and spinach to go in, ready for manoo'erin and planting up on Sunday. Probably a bit late for both really, but here's hoping for some beginner's luck!

Slow progress is better than no progress.

Hello from sunny South Cambridgeshire... well actually its raining today, but I'm not going to complain!

I was all set to post a few photos of the 'progress' that we've made on the plot, until the Yorkshireman came home at lunchtime and took the camera to work for the afternoon, so I'll have to add those later.

What we have been up to is mostly weeding and hoeing and more weeding and more hoeing and so on and so forth. I have now managed to clear half the plot and mark out the 4 winter veg beds and the Christmas potatoes. I took the Yorkshireman up with me last weekend and he kindly dug over the bed for the potatoes and we have now planted them, so at least we can same something is growing!
On Tuesday I went up to the plot and the plot manager Jim kindly strimmed down all of the weeds on the other half of the plot with an old fashioned scythe. It was a pretty nifty tool too as it was far quicker than me fannying about with a petrol strimmer and a darn sight safer too (being that someone else was doing it!). I had planned to photograph this wonder of bygone technology, but unfortunately I had forgotten to put the memory card in the camera and now my iphone is playing silly buggers and won't let me download the few pictures I did manage to snap. Technology, who'd have it eh?!

So while I have nothing to show you, I can assure you something has been done since my last post... And hopefully if it stops raining, I'll be able to get up there this afternoon for a spot of digging in preparating for The Great Manure Delivery, which should happen any day now.

On that note, I'd better be off as Project Manager Chops has awoken from his nap and I need to dig out my wellies for this afternoon's digging.

A whole lotta 'Lotment

It's official, we are Allotmenteers! A bit like Musketeers, but without the silly hats and swords.... Ok, so its not really the same thing... but its a good title isn't it?

So we have managed to secure ourselves a 5 pole plot on the village allotments and on Tuesday I decided I'd better get myself down there and start clearing the weeds. I loaded up The Pram (handy wheely thing for carting compost and small children about in, although not at the same time!) and popped Charlie in the sling and we headed down to the bus stop, decked out in sunhats and shorts and suitably coated in factor 50. And we waited. And waited. Aaaaaaand waited. Half an hour in the hot afternoon sunshine and much cursing and muttering about how it would have been quicker to walk and the bus finally turned up. According to the driver the normal bus had broken down, so an older replacement had been sent out to ferry the passengers to their destinations. The only problem being was that it had steps and that odd pole thing that they used to have on buses (obviously before they let disabled people on buses!) so getting on with a pram laden with gardening tools and a hot and sweaty child in a sling wasn't the easiest task. Fortunately the driver took pity on me and got out to help me carry everything on and off, and ten minutes later we were stood outside the allotments.

There was much huffing and puffing as I then had to lift everything over the gate and down to our little plot which is actually the back half of a plot. The front is rented by a lovely Finnish lady called Lisa, who took on her half back in May and is also fairly new to Allotmenteering. Fortunately for us she has tackled some of the weeds on our plot to stop them spreading to hers, so half of the work has been done and made things a lot easier when it came to clearing weeds with the push hoe.

The push how was lent to me by the plot manager Jim, and with much tooing and froing up and down the plot for about 2 hours I managed to clear about 6 metres of weeds. That was pretty much all I could achieve on Tuesday as Charlie was beginning to protest about being stuck in the pram with nothing to do. So we toddled off home along the bumpy stony path that runs between the two halves of the village. Its about 1.3 miles from the front door to the plot so only takes about 2o minutes to walk and hopefully after my birthday, we'll be cycling to and fro on the days where we don't need to carry heavy forks and spades.

Keen to crack on with weeding and digging I decided we'd go back on Wednesday as well, but in the morning this time to try and keep a little cooler. As it happened Eldest Brother was at a loose end so I invited him to come down and help out. The idea didn't fill him with joy but being the good sport that he is, he came along anyway and lo and behold he's quite handy with a spade! We stayed for about n hour and a half and managed to dig and turn over the first area to be planted with the Christmas potatoes. We also did a fair bit of chatting and eating biscuits as well and it was handy to have someone there to entertain Charlie. Hopefully he'll be able to come along every few weeks and help out... The joy of free labour!

Today our plans to go to the plot have been scuppered as its been raining all morning, but I have plenty to be doing at home so its probably a good thing. The Yorkshirman's brother and his girlfriend will be visiting this weekend, so in all likelihood (and weather permitting) we'll drag them up to the plot to plant the aforementioned Christmas spuds and clear more weeks. I have drawn up The Plan for where everything will be planted next year, so I should imagine The Yorshireman will be getting busy with string and marker pegs to make sure everything in the right place... He does like things to be precise!

I'll try and get a copy of the plan on here some time soon and fingers crossed the rain will ease off this afternoon as we need to venture out for milk and eggs!

Grow my pretties... Grow!

Yes, there is finally life a'growin in our little garden! I have planted out a few potatoes, the late runner beans and some spinach in the muddy patch and have been watering them generously as its not rained in about a week now. I repotted the cavolo nero kale and perpetual spinach ready for planting out in a few weeks as they were all beginning to look a bit overcrowded in their little pots. Must remember to invest in some of those little sowing modules next year as I'm sure that will make repotting a less fiddly affair.

The exciting thing about the kale and perpetual spinach (and the chitting spuds) is that they will be (fingers crossed) planted in our new allotment. I finally tracked down the plot manager and they have a half plot ready to be planted which he is happy to offer us for minimal rent. We shall be going down there on Saturday afternoon to have a look and hopefully return Allotmenteers! While I don't think we'll quite be living The Good Life just yet, it should give us a small amount of leafy green foodstuffs over the autumn and winter until we get properly growing in 2012.

Theres not much else to report on the growing front so I'll be off and hopefully have some photos of the new plot to show off next time :)

Gardening Misadventures.

I really should make more of an effort to blog a bit more frequently .... So in an effort to keep track of my horticultural misadventures I shall be using blogger to keep track of how and what I'm growing.

As you can see, I've not got very far. Since taking this photo I've double dug and added compost to this little brown patch at the bottom of the garden and am waiting for The Yorkshireman to build me a raised planter to help keep the mud from spreading!

In all likelihood this wont happen for several weeks (Him being a super busy Web Developaaah) so I may well just plant the winter veg straight in the ground and hope it doesn't all go tits up!

Talking of veg, so far I have (waiting to be planted) perpetual spinach, kale, kavolo nero, runner beans and christmas day potatoes... Well the latter is still waiting to be put in their pots. Not much, but plans are afoot for us to be eating mostly home grown veg next year so I promise to be more organised... Honest!

So, this week I shall be bothering our local allotment manager in the hope there is a spare plot we can rent as this will help greatly on the space for growing/volume of produce front. Sadly our garden is pretty small and like most newbuild has 3 inches of turf roots and then nothing but clay and rubble underneath. Fine if all you want is grass but pants for veg!

Finally I'd better update of the progress of our most successful seedling. Charlie the perpetually growing Bambino..

He's now a proper Little Person, albeit not quite walking and talking, he does try and rule the roost and make his views known (especially about nappy changes and being told no). Hopefully he will become Interested in growing things as he gets older but for now I just try and keep an eye on him as he eats compost while I'm digging.

And so as Charlie is now a'sleepin I have a two hour window to get all the washing, cleaning, planting, cooking and tidying done I'd better be off.

Fingers crossed I'll be back soon with something to talk about!