Garden Walk 29th May

It has been raining for two days straight here and I have not really been up the garden at all, we had a glorious bank holiday weekend but I was working most of it. So in between the showers today I finally went out and took a look. The mix of some good sunshine and now some rain has really done some good.

The Potatoes are going well, both the lates in the raised bed and the earlies in the tubs.

My Tomatoes have been out of the greenhouse about a month or so now and I am quite happy with them. The are Tumbling Tom bush cherry variety, which did really well for me last year.

Mean while in the flowery part of the garden........ Lupins, Digitalis and Forsythia are coming on strong.

 One of my two apple trees on blossom, the other looks like it is on deaths door, hardly any leaves and its blossom, what little of it there was has gone brown. I think its dead. 

Last year I bought some creeping Thyme which I have moved around a little some of them are doing better that others. I want a carpeted area of it so I can rub my hands amongst it.

In the shed bed, the Dog Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) surrounding my tiny Kiwi Vine has taken well, to its left some Lily's of some kind and to its right the old rose bush that was in the bed when we moved in. All the earthy gaps I have filled with wild flowers and poppy's for this year.  

Lavander is slowly growing around my now dead looking Discovery apple tree.

My Shady plants are happy too, one of my astilbe's below.

And finally the ferns and Hosta's, which I am growing on in pots and buying more of until I get round to building my Shade Garden Planter some time this summer.

Gardening Reading, Reference, Help and Expanding Your Knowledge.

When I decided that Gardening was something I was going to do, alot, I thought I should read up a little before I even started. Grounding myself in some basic gardening knowledge through books and the internet has helped and made my first attempts more successful than if I had just jumped straight in. The purpose of this post then I guess is to share the books and websites that I found helpful and some that I use now. 

There are many many many books on gardening and it can be extremely hard to choose one that you think will help you. Though in my opinion most books convey the same information just some do it better and in a more interesting way. My top tip when looking for a gardening book is get yourself down to a second hand shop or jumble sale, nearly always there is some gardening book of some kind for sale for no money at all. Here you can have a look through and see if it is something that will help. The internet of course has shops like Amazon were you can get second hand books at a great price too and there is always a huge variety to choose from. 

The first book I bought from Amazon was John Harrison's Essential Allotment Guide.

This small paperback edition I found as a complete newcomer to growing, good. It gave me an idea (though a vague one) of what I needed and what I would be up against when I started out. I read it through several times and I am sure it retained some of the information contained within. I would say it is a good beginners book, I have since gone back to it and found that now it is a little to basic and lacking in the more complex information that I was looking for.

As the gardening bug took hold and my Family noticed this it was then inevitable that come Christmas I would get some Garden related presents. What I got from my loving mother was Alan Titchmarsh's Kitchen Gardener and Carol Klein's Grow Your Own Garden. 

Well both these books I have found extremely helpful, especially Carol Klein's Grow Your Own Garden. Propagation in all its forms can be complex and this book really breaks it down into all its forms and really explains the processes needed for results. Alan Titchmarsh's book I have to say it not one I would have bought with my own money. That said Kitchen Gardener is excellent with detailed information on fruit and vegetable growing, and I often use it as a reference book when I am planning out what I am going to grow. I would recommend both highly as books useful for the beginner but also as reference books later down the line,

Whilst trawling through the charity shops I came across The Vegetable and Herb Expert by Dr D. G. Hessayon. 

 As far as Vegetable growing books go, for me this is the ultimate reference. Any information you could possibly want to know is contained with in, from seed germination time to disease and pests. It is  utterly comprehensive. I think possibly the most valuable book I have acquired so far. 

As far as websites go, there are millions and there are few that I regularly go to. I tend hunt around them all and read what I find relevant. The one I go to most of all is the BBC Gardeners World site . I do love the TV Show and the website is a great add on to that. The What To Do Now section I have found very helpful. 

I am sure that I will probably pick up more books and find better websites as time goes on, I know at some point I will get one Of Monty Don's books as I am becoming slightly obsessed with him!!

Shade Garden Project

Ever since moving to this house I have been looking at what I can do with the yard area next to the house. It is a very decent sized space that has so far been neglected and left bare of plant life. The kitchen sink looks directly out on to it and to be honest it has looked terrible, its not what you want to see whilst scrubbing the Sunday roast pans. The flaked paint hanging off the concrete block wall and what is left of the white paint had turned to a manky magnolia colour.

I have had in my mind for a while the idea of a shade garden in this dark and cool corner of the yard. I have a real affinity for those plants that can flourish in these conditions, Ferns, Hosta etc. What I really want to create is a forest/jungle type area right outside my back door to bring some life and greenery to it. So yesterday stage one of the shade garden was completed, the painting of the horrid wall. This is what it was looking like.

Its not a very appealing scene is it, after a couple of ours of painting and tiding up it looks so much better.

The white walls really brighten it up on a dull day like to day, even this little lick of paint has made it a slightly better place to be. Next on the agenda is to clean up the paving which has a terrible build up of grime, with this done I can start to think about building a planter that runs the length of the wall. The trellising I have decided to leave up as I have seen a climbing fern on Ebay that would be perfect for it. Also the door I want to paint to, but not white maybe a heritage green of some kind. Plant wise lots of ferns large and small, astilibe, hosta, wild garlic and any other shade loving plant I can get my hands on .It is still early days on this project but I feel happy with what we have done and how it will be when we finish.

Waiting for Things to Happen.

Its been a few days since i put anything up on here, mostly because I have been waiting for things to happen in the garden. The weather has turned a bit wet and cold again and I am sure everything has decided to stop growing. 

At least the late potatoes have broken through finally, I always worry about them for some reason but they have never failed me. Most things I have to say are slowly coming along in the veg garden and giving the weeds a run for their money. The most exciting thing to happen this week was when I found a baby frog hopping around my lawn, possibly the most delicate and cute frog I have ever seen....

It was ting as you can see, smaller than my thumb nail, and I have to say my hands are big manly one so its even smaller than you think. I love seeing something like this in my garden and was over the moon about it. But then I was struck with horror at mowing the lawn in case Hugh (I named him Hugh) or or his siblings would be hopping around in it! So I have left that job for now but when I do I will be checking the lawn first. 

I don' have a pond so Hugh has travelled from a near by garden on his way somewhere were all the cool frogs hang out. Maybe its my garden, I have seen alot of adult frogs always in the same part of my garden and I like to think his parents met right here... Maybe it was them who I caught at it on my lawn a few months ago? 

 

Plan for the Future. A Real Greenhouse.

With the demise of my little greenhouse last weekend I have been looking at a future without one. I am not inclined to go and get another of these £15 things again, they are just too lightweight and flimsy.Add to that the limited space they provide they are only good for helping your seedlings along until they get far to big for it. 

I would like or if I am talking to my partner 'I NEED' a greenhouse. I have talked about it in the past but my pleading has always fell on deaf ears, until this week and the 'Great Greenhouse Disaster of 2013'. I did not even bring the subject up, I was so surprised when she said 'you can get a greenhouse for your birthday'. Its my big 3 0 this year so I guess this is a real treat. So with this in my mind I hit the internet and started to look around at what I could have! In my mind I see a beautiful traditional English greenhouse like this.

What we can afford is somewhat far less attractive. My problem is with something as big as a greenhouse in my long and narrow garden, I want something that will be attractive to look at as well as functional. I imagine the above greenhouse is a well in to four digits and well out of my league. The most affordable greenhouse that I would even consider is just short of £300 for a 6" x 8"ft size. Am I being greedy in wanting something bigger? I was told by an old time gardener that if I was going to invest in a greenhouse get the biggest I could afford, as you never have enough space in the end. 

My only other option is to build my own, to the size and style I want. Which I think I could do on a relatively cheap budget. The one issue I face is I am a terrible joiner! TERRIBLE! Cutting wood straight is not my strong point. However my dad is a joiner, he does not know it yet but he will being helping me if I do make it myself. I told my mother so its as good as sorted! Thanks Mum.

That Might be a Mistake

I was just talking to my next door neighbour who has just started gardening this year (we have now a little garden community around us) mostly to grow vegetables. He finally planted out his Pea's last night  and he was telling my that some of them had been gotten at by insects and that they had laid eggs on the roots etc. He has now thrown them away. His Peas had grown on well in the green house and are far more advanced than mine, so this was terrible news. But when he told me I was pretty sure that the 'eggs' on the roots were infact the nitrogen sacks that Peas fix into the ground from the air. I told him my thoughts as to what they were and I think I may have ruined his day. I have never seen what these nodules look like but have read up about them in the past, so I may be wrong. Does anyone else know for sure of any insects in the UK laying eggs on Pea roots? Or am I right in asserting that they are these nitrogen nodules?

Re-purpose in the Garden, Its Fun and Creative

One of the reasons I love gardening is the opportunity to be creative, whether that is arranging plants in the garden or building something that is of use in it. Since I started I have never been flush with money and my childhood in my parents garden was a lesson in creativity to make the most of what we had. Of course I go out and buy a few treats here and there but often I am reusing, re-purposing or upcycling something for the garden. Here are a few things that I have been doing over the last few months...

Tin Can Hanging Basket, I luckily work in a place were I can often find objects of use that normally I would not get my hands on and very large tin cans is one of them. Last year I bought some cheap frame green hanging baskets and the looked awful when the lining mat discoloured and fell apart. Because of this I thought I would just use the baskets as cloches to protect my plants, which left all the chains spare. So I attached them up with the cans and here it is.

Wooden Planter made from off cuts from a building project. I surprised myself with its neatness, I really didn't think I could anything like that well.

 

Garden Theatre/Station, banged together from some old pallets I had collected. This took me a little while to build and finish as I did not plan it I just built as I went, my skills as a joiner or carpenter are rather limited so again I was rather chuffed with this.

Garden Stand, this is an unused glass TV stand that had been hogging up vital space in my shed for over a year and a half until my partner thought it could be used in the garden. I'm just glad to have it out of the shed to be honest, but I think it works. Currently hold some of the shade loving plants I have.

These are just a few things I have done recently and I guess they are not that creative but they really have a use in the garden. Your garden is about you and I feel one of the best ways to show that is to create your own things to go in it,repurposing allows you to try without the worry of cost. And if it doesnt work it does not matter what ever it was was probably going to the Tip at some point anyway!!

Garden Disaster

Yesterday, after making my usual morning walk about the garden and being rather pleased with thingings I went of into town to treat myself to some garden bits and bobs. I was out for a few hours and on my return I came back to this.

My little greenhouse collapsed! As you can see! I arrived home to a note on the door from my neighbour who had been in the garden at the time and heard it all happen. He jumped over the wall and did his best to save my 'babies' (as he called it) from the baking sun by putting as much as he could back into there pots. As you may imagine I was rather gutted upon my return home and I am sure I was swearing like a drunken docker. After my initial grief I jumped in and cleared up the mess and salvaged  as much as I could. The casualty list was not as bad as first thought, I tomato seedling dead, my courgette lost a limb and a few other toms are now on intensive care but look good to recover. The greenhouse was a wreck. 

The cause of the collapse...... Me. Its a cheap greenhouse and I had loaded it with a few bricks to stop the wind from blowing it away, like it did last year. Add to that I potted up my larger tomatoes into large pots and watered them in well, it was all to much for the structure in the end!! There are alot of homeless seedlings right now who will have to live outside and hope Mr Frost has now gone away for the summer.

Yesterday will be forever remembered as the 'Great Greenhouse Disaster of 2013'.

Its Spring But Feels Like Summer Today

The Sun is out, the sky is blue and its going to be the warmest day of the year so far, gutted I have got to go to work. Over the last few weeks things have started to happen in the garden  and I start to get excited. Typically when I get up I make myself a brew (a cup of coffee) and take my morning inspection stroll around the garden. A few things caught my eye.

A couple of weeks ago I procured myself some wild garlic, I planted it up but within a few hours it was wilted and sad looking. It looked very much like this for the next few days but I continued to water it well and hope for the best. It got better and now its sending out some buds.

I hope to split and devide these pots up for a year or two and build up a large amount so I can eat it, Plus it does great in the shady yard next to the house.

My second flush of Tulips are here..

Whilst the Tulips are out and looking lovely, my large daffodils have been and gone in a wimper. There dwarf counterparts however are in bloom and they are 'so cute'.

In the background there is Noble my cat on his morning constitutional, where he usually uses one of my flower beds as a litter tray. We don't always get along about his choice of toilet. 

My Gypsophila looks like it might do something this year, it was all leaf last year but then again I only planted it in then.

My swathe of Lavender is still waiting to happen put the little young plants look healthy even though I planted them out just before we had horrendous snow and freezing conditions.

Up in the veg pot things are doing ok too, though from a distance its very hard to tell...

Underneath all that stuff I have have things growing I assure you! in the nearest bed on the picture are my late potatoes which are King Edward, they have yet to break earth. I did have a poke about to see if they were actually sending out roots and shoots, I am inpatient with potatoes and worry to much, but they are doing fine, they are ALIVE! Also planted out on the beds are Peas ( a French variety I cant remember what they are called), Broad beans (Red Epicure), Parsnip (Tender but True), Beetroot (Detroit and Cylindrica), Onions (Stuttgart), Carrot (Purple Comet I think) Leeks and Garlic. Most thinks have germinated and are growing now.

I have a few things in planters too, My early potatoes (Rocket) and dwarf beans..

I have plugged in a few spare onions were I had gaps. I bought 30 bare root strawberry plants of of ebay and they are doing great, I have three varieties, Marshmellow, Vibrant and Flamenco. An early a main and a late, so I should never be short of strawberries. They only cost me £11,50 I would have paid a hell of alot more from the Garden Centre down the road.

So somethings are getting going finally and well a few weeks down the line thinks should start looking better!

Chickens

For sometime now I have wanted chickens, about a year ago I mentioned this to my partner and well she seemed rather unimpressed by the idea. However I was persistent and made a few big sells to her over the next few months and finally ground her down. Now she is very excited by it all. One of her initial worries was the the set up cost of a coop and run, which after looking around at some on the internet I had to agree with. We are both working people with no massive outlays but forking out on a coop just seemed to much of an expense but on the other hand I have not inherited my fathers joinery skills. So what to do? I was still intent on having some so decided to sell all my under the bed junk that I had accumulated over the years, so on to Ebay it went and I quickly raised the dosh. And this is what I bought.

  

It is supposed to be a 6-10 bird coop, but initially I will have but 4 rescued battery hens and then sometime later maybe some other kind of breed. I am looking forward to the eggs of course but also the manure! The free manure will need to be well rotted down in the compost heap before I can make use of it on the veg and flower beds. At the moment I have an unlimited supply from the local animal rescue centre but its an absolute killer to cart home.

One Lesson Learned After a Year in the Garden

On mulling over last year and the start of this year I thought what is the biggest lesson learnt so far? There are many indeed I'm sure but one came to mind straight away and it probably has something to do with it being spring.

Like all us gardeners I LOVE TO COMPOST, and last year put every scrap of compostable waste I could to this good use and by September I had some good rotting down done. So I got out my garden sieve and went to work on my compost heap and around an hour later I had got myself two large sacks of compost. I was very chuffed. The compost had plenty of rotten matter and manure and looked great, though not totally like the shop bought stuff. Anyway I stored it away for winter for the following year. 

Come early spring I decided to get some seeds done, and here is were I learned my lesson. I planted up lots of seeds and waited for some germination! Not long after some germination started to happen, but to my dismay is was not what I planted, it was everything else but what I planted, Dandelion, Poppy and other such easily germinating monsters. So I plucked them out and waited. Soon after what I planted came up and I thought YES my compost is good I can cope with a few weeds here and there. Of Course my first wave of extermination was not the last...... it never is. To cut this a little shorter my  little vegetable babies came through, but I have since found that they have struggled to get going and I know its because I used my own homemade compost. In comparison to other seedling done in bought compost they have grown much slower and are of a poor quality. So my biggest lesson learnt... DON'T USE HOME-MADE COMPOST FOR SEEDLINGS! There are plenty other ways to use it, next year its getting forked through the flower beds.

My Design Style or Lack There Off

There are alot of ways to plant up your flower garden, ways that have been tried and tested by the garden greats and pro's of this world that will give the required look you are looking for in your garden. I have no style at all and this does not apply just to the garden! People sit down and meticulously plan out there borders and what plant will go where etc, but for some reason I am incapable of doing this. This probably stems from my general ignorance about plants and shrubs and how to apply them to a garden to create a certain effect. Furthermore my preference towards plants that produce something edible far out weighs my love of flowers and foliage most of the time.

So thus far the flower garden has been slightly neglected, but I have stated to make amens. Last year I did chuck in a few spring and summer bulbs just to add a little colour to the general dirt theme I had going on and it certainly made it look mildly better. This year I have decided that those dirty flower beds need more putting in. New additions this year are Lavender (Hidcot & Munstead) in a curved block part of the beds, in the hope it looks a little something like this....

Well sort of like that, the fluffy blue swathes of Lavender minus the well tended box hedge in the back ground. Instead my Discovery apple tree will stand in the centre of this Lavender ORGY! In my head it looks good, the results in the soil have yet to be seen. 

Lupins, a garden favourate! Are in there too, they remind me off the garden from my childhood so are very welcome, these are just your standard types but I would love to get my hands on some special variety's one day. The look like this right now...

The late winter does not seem to have hampered them much and the are now shooting into life. Oh you can just see the red terracotta roof tiles I used to create a raised border, these were left at the house when we moved in and after weighing up the cost of some type of lawn border I took the cheaper free option and used these instead.

You can see the tiles better on this one, and also the terrible state of the flower beds. The Stainless Steal balls do nothing to enhance the scene! Hopefully all the wild flower seed I chucked discarded everywhere will improve this a little. The little round bush was in the ground when we arrived and I hold a general hatred for it but I am obliged to keep it in on orders from the girlfriend.

You will never see this mix of planting in any garden you ever visit or see on TV! A world first no doubt, the stars of this netted show are Dog Daisy which envelopes the sunken trough containing a Kiwi Vine! The Kiwi is the stick like thing protruding like a lost earthworm from the soil. Will i ever get Kiwi fruit from this vine? I bloody hope so! It is an acid loving plant hence the reason i have sunk a trug into the soil in an attempt to keep my PH balance of acid and normal separate. I was given half a ton of dog daisy from a garden friend who was thinning out his own and I really liked the look of it. Free or cheap plants is the general theme or the garden so far.

Third Time Lucky In The Post Cyathea cooperi

A couple of weeks ago I ordered a Cythea Cooperi Tree Fern online from Ireland as I have been fawning over having one for the last year. Its a lovely looking Tree Fern alot slimmer than a Dicksonia Antartica which was what I was considering getting first. What swung it though was that the Cyathea can in ideal conditions grow up to a foot a year! So I got one. However the postman tried to deliver it when I was not in and I had to reorganise delivery, not ideal. The postman then came again when I was  in, but fast asleep after working a night shift and I didn't hear a thing. Finally this morning a good week and a half from the first delivery attempt it was here and I was awake and alive to receive it. I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it was dead or as good as! And the £10 spent on it was gone. So I opened the package expecting the very worst scenario, a dry wilted bashed about ghost of a plant, to my utter joy the bloody thing looks in perfect condition!! 

I will let it now sit on the window sill to reCOOPERIrate (see what I did there) for a little while.

My Garden Blog

Well, for my first post I thought I had better write myself a statement of intent about what I am going to do in this blog, no doubt it will alter and change over time into something different or better. So at least I know what I set out intending to do.

I have been gardening as hobby for just over a year now after moving into a house with an actual garden. Other homes I had lived in had poky little gravel patches which never really captured my imagination to do anything with. I would however grow the odd thing here and there, usually like most people some herbs or strawberry's but nothing more. For many years I had considered an allotment, the idea of growing my own vegetables and learning something new made me apply for my own plot. After a year and a half on the waiting list I finally got one and off I went! The plot seemed fine and I had some really good guys around who had been doing it for years. After many hours, days, weeks and months of getting it clear and planting a few things my plot didn't seem so good! It turned out I had picked a bad one, the one that floods every time it rains a little, the one infested with Mares Tail, the one that NO ONE WANTED!I lost heart in it all and went back to my poky gravel pit garden and put the allotmenteering behind me.

But then we moved to Nottinghamshire and the semi rural bliss of D.H. Lawrence country and into a house with a garden, with grass, with soil and a decent amount of it too! Its no small holding by any stretch of the imagination but its certainly enough for me to do the things that I wanted to do, grow some veg, some flowers and shrubs and have somewhere to be outside. This is the point where I show you what I am working with......

As you can see it is not a bad size garden and there is plenty to do! These picture were taken last year and it has advanced a little since then. In the above picture you can see me starting my raised beds with builders bottom to go with it up at the top of the garden. The middle picture is were (what I call the none productive garden) flower garden is. And the first picture is the paved patio area next to the house. Its been nicely sectioned into three for me with my shed right in the middle. I have plenty to do!

I am a novice and prone to many novice mistakes. Take my raised beds for instance, I would totally do them a different way now than I did when I put them in. I can grow in them fine but I did not make them as accessible as I could have. And that annoys me. To limit my ignorance I have read up alot over the last year online and with various well know garden authors so this year I am slightly wiser than last. Despite my lack of knowledge and or abilities I did fine last year and I am told it was a bad one. I got lots of garlic, onions, potatoes, broccoli, beetroot and more tomatoes than I could ever eat, so I have been pretty pleased with myself as you can imagine.  I am expecting to do even better this year.

The point of this blog then is to record how I am doing with the garden, more for my won reference than anything else but if its interesting or helpful for others then that's an added bonus. I have tried keeping my own note book on this but the Mrs took it an now uses it to write her shopping lists and other such things in it.