Diary of a suburban edible garden, September 2017.

This month, most of my gardening time has been taken up with de-lawing.  I no longer have a (weedy, patchy, lumpy, bumpy, weirdly small) lawn!

We sheet mulched it, which involved digging the edges of the lawn up, laying card and newspaper over the lawn, then topping with a thick layer of bark chippings.  Bonus feature - the garden currently smells like a pine forest!

We also removed the stones that edged the narrow border between the lawn and the fence, which is why there's a pile of stones in the middle of the path now!

Here's what it looked like before.

I'm much happier now.  And once we've got the hard landscaping sorted (path, patio, shed + stompy builders stomping all over the garden) I'll plant up the ex-lawn and have lots more lovely plants and trees.

You can see I also bark-chipped over the ex-weedy patch at the bottom of the garden, as I'm probably not going to get round to planting it all this year, and the chips will prevent weeds and soil erosion, and rot down into the soil and make it nice. 

The bin's there because it's waiting to be planted up with a thornless blackberry plant I was given for my birthday.  I figured it was the biggest, cheapest plastic free option for a large pot, that would also stop the roots escaping and spreading through the garden.  It also matches my steel raised beds. 

This is my plant waiting area.  Every time I go out to garden it rains on me!  Waiting to be planted are a blackcurrant bush and the thornless blackberry - excellent birthday gifts from my father in law and his partner, it's not very often someone buys you exactly the things you were planning to buy yourself, with no prompting or clues, but this was one of those times.  There's also two hazel nut trees, an almond tree and a discovery apple tree that I bought with some birthday money I was given.  

This is my other plant waiting area.  There are lots of herbs waiting to be planted, including a curry plant that smells amazing and Siberian perennial onions.  I have a tray of herbs I bought from Homebase in the sale for £2 to plant too.  The herbs and trees are from Victoriana Nursery, it's hard to buy plants without a car, but I think this is a good online option, they seem pretty eco-friendly and the plants are healthy barring the odd insect hitch-hiker.  

I bought these perennial cut and come again cauliflower from Victoriana Nursery too, which I'm pretty darn excited to plant! 

My back garden raised beds are doing good.  I was worried I wasn't going to get any beans from my lazy housewife beans, but they're coming along now.  I had two cabbages that suffered from being eaten by cabbage white caterpillars.  I've tried to live peaceably with my caterpillar chums, because butterflies are struggling so much, so I just left them to much away happily.  I like the thought that the caterpillars have eaten their fill, and now one of the cabbages is making a comeback, so I'll get to eat my fill too.

There's lots of yummy salad growing too, and some beans and sweetcorn that I'm doubtful will make beans and sweetcorn before we have frosts - but you never know! 

This bit of the garden is really pretty right now, all the flowers seem to be putting on a final flourish before winter.  I'm planning on planting my new almond tree at the back of this patch by the fence, and I have a smoke bush on order I want to plant along here too.  There are lots of plants to move if the weather is Ever un-rainy.

This cute little calendula has been my favourite flower this year.  It's smaller and yellower than all the others and has flowered all summer long, I'll be saving seed from it.

I shall leave you with this beetle friend.  Isn't he cute!  I'm so pleased there are beetles in the garden - they eat slugs don't you know! 

 How's your garden this month? 

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My homegrown harvest, August 2017.

There's not been so much to harvest this month.  Which is ok, I'm still getting my timings right for successional planting and stuff.  I'm just happy to be eating homw grown food!

I was super pleased with my first little bean harvest and I'll definitely grow more beans next year.  I made some rice and beans with my borlotto beans, I always think it's such a shame they don't stay stripey when they're cooked!

I accidentally grew some beetroot!  I thought it was Swiss chard but no, on closer inspection they were beetroot and Joe's eaten them with his roast dinner as I don't like beetroot.  I've had a request to grow him some more so I've planted some more little clumps of seed to see if they'll grow over autumn and winter.

We've had loads of raspberries towards the end of the month.  I'm picking a couple of handfuls of them every other day and there are loads and loads still to come, it's such a good year for raspberries.  Joe and I had to share this sweetcorn because it's the only one that's grown.  It was super yummy though!

How are your gardens?  Are you harvesting anything exciting?

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My homegrown harvest, July 2017.

This has been a month of many courgettes!  

I need to sort my timings out for next year, and plan to do more successional  sowing, I've run out of lettuce and had the last of my peas, and didn't sow any more to replace them! 

I've had loads of courgettes however, I'm at the taking-courgettes-to-work-and-passing-them-off-to-my-colleagues stage of courgette glut.  

I had a gorgeous head of garlic, just from a clove of supermarket garlic I planted - it was so lovely and fresh. 

I've picked all my broad beans and the start of the borlotto beans, I'm not waiting for them to dry, I'll eat them fresh.

 

The rats tail radish has been prolific, unfortunately neither of us are keen on the seed pods, either raw or cooked.  They may be heading compostwards!  The flowers on the plants have attracted loads of hoverflies into the garden, so I might grow it again next year just for the insects. 

There's been a bit more that I didn't photograph, but not much.  We've had a few blueberries, but the blackbird has had more!  And my autumn bliss raspberries have produced a few berries too.  I'm not sure why, you can leave a cane of autumn rasps to over winter, then it'll fruit earlier in the summer, but I cut all my canes to the ground.  Whatever the reason the raspberries I've had have been so delicious, like sweeties.

How are your gardens?  Are you harvesting anything exciting? 

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Diary of a suburban edible garden, May 2017.

The other morning the postman said to me 'your garden's gone woosh hasn't it?!'.  And 'woosh' is exactly the right way to describe the garden this month, it's been the perfect combination of roasting hot and big rainy that promotes lots of leafy wooshyness. 

Unfortunately the weeds have gone woosh as well as the plants I want, but you can't have everything!  The slugs ate all my seedlings when we went on holiday, and there's a blackbird nesting in my wigela so I can't get over there to prune and weed under it.  I'm quite happy to have a nester though, it shows the garden's attractive to wildlife which means I'm doing something right!

I've planted 3 new tiny trees this month!  In the side garden I've planted a rowan and a hazel.  There's a little oak tree too that I intend to grow in a pot (I'll increase the size of the pot as it grows, but there'll have to be some pruning too!).  I also bought a little dog rose to grow up the fence and (hopefully) hide the view of the neighbours heads bobbing up and down their driveway.  I bought all the saplings online from the Woodland Trust.

I wonder how many trees I can fit into my little garden.  I think I have 7 in the back garden and there's 4 in the front garden, and I have plans for loads more fruit trees.

My little apple trees have some apples on them!  Quite a lot have dropped off (June drop?), but I'm hoping for at least one home grown apple this year.

Here's the side garden, the raspberries are looking goood.

I have chives all over the garden and the bees are going mad for them.

The raised beds in the front garden are doing really well.  There's some slug damage on some plants, but I've got yellow and purple mange tout (the purple are self sown from last years plants), broad beans, minipops sweetcorn, borlotti beans, strawberries, nasturtiums, pattypans and some leeks in there.  It needs a bit of a weed!

The ground elder in the front garden definitely needs weeding!  Joe's dug loads out and we've covered the bare ground with cardboard, but there's still more to do (before those flowers set seed!).

My back garden raised bed is really giving me the happys.  The first photo is from 4 weeks ago, the next one is from now, so you can see how much it's grown in a month!

Woosh! 

I'm really pleased with the lettuces - I have never been able to grow salad and I currently have loads of the stuff.  I'm creating my own polyculture salad seed mixes to sow (and keeping track of them in my little gardening journal).  I just mix a few varieties of seeds that I think will complement each other and sprinkle them where I want them to grow.  I've been sprinkling quite liberally then eating the thinnings! 

I'll leave you with this beautiful rose, which smells lovely and has loads of flowers (because I didn't prune it last year and now it's about 8 foot tall!) and this lovely nigella flower cos it's pretty too!

PS.  I still haven't finished painting the fence! I did one more panel but it keeps raining!

How's your garden this month? 

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