Diary of a permaculture -ish garden, March and April 2020.

Lilac blossom time is my favourite time.  It smells so good.  My neighbour says she can smell it in her garden too, and she wants a cutting of it when the time's right.

In the back garden, my raised beds have been topped up with a mix of driveway soil (yep we're still going with that!), hotbin compost and some compost from a big deep planter I'm getting rid of.  I've planted potatoes, peas and broad beans in one, and interplanted with spinach and bok choi.  My other back garden raised bed is empty for now, but I have some minipops sweetcorn in the greenhouse ready to go in next week.  There's swiss chard in both raised beds that's just started to bolt.  And you can see in the front one that my walking onions have popped back up and have started to flower.

One of my projects has been rationalising the amount of pots I have round the garden.  I've been planting things into the ground and rearranging, I'm pleased with this little arrangement with the owl planter and the big terracotta bowl with ginger and spring onions in it. 

My front garden raised beds are doing so good.  A couple have been cleared out and are waiting for new plants, and a couple are full, of onions and garlic, and garlic and carrot seedlings and lettuce seedlings.  My onions are covered because we get onion moth (they lay their eggs in the leaves and the caterpillar buries itself in the onion and eats it from the inside out!), my cover is a mosquito net for a cot, held up with sticks, and so far it seems to be working ok. 

We had a really big job done on the back hedge.  It's needed trimming for ages and we finally bit the bullet and had a tree surgeon come and do it.  It cost £500!!!!!!!!!  And while I'm sad about the loss of birdy habitat and privacy from the houses behind, I am definitely glad of the extra light that it's letting into the garden, and to be rid of the creeping dread that 'something' would have to be done about the hedge - at least it's done now!  The winter-y photo below is the before, and the next the after.  Just so you know, the tree to the left was a sycamore and was taller than our house.  The huge tree on the right is also a sycamore and was what I was dreading our tree turning into.

The hedge looks a bit sparse at the moment, but I've been assured it will grow back pretty quickly in the next few months, and there is new growth on it.  I asked for the chipped wood from the hedge-cutting, and there was enough to cover our whole garden, 14 rubble sacks have gone to mums for her garden and we still have this much left, under the blue tarp, in an old tonne gravel bag! 

I'm dealing with this corner next.  I've already started clearing it out, I need to finish that, put gravel down and then move my shed and greenhouse so they're flat against the brick wall at the back. 

Speaking of greenhouses, I've painted mine, black and white because that's the only paint we have at the moment, and I think it looks ok.

I don't feed the birds.  We've had rats and mice in the garden and I don't want to encourage them.  But the garden is always full of birds, sparrows, robins, blue tits, coal tits, great tits, blackbirds, starlings, pigeons and these goldfinches, who visit to eat dandelion seeds for their lunch. 

How's your garden doing? 

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Diary of a suburban permaculture -ish garden, February 2020.

Look at this little blossom! 

It's a cherryplum and I hope the weather doesn't go too crazy and blow the blossom away before it gets pollinated!  And look at these crab apples, still holding on, I love the colour of them.

It's been so long since I wrote about my garden.  And that's because my camera's memory card corrupted so I've lost like a years worth of photos.  But I have a new camera and a new memory card and I'm backing everything up like crazy!

I got some pennies for Christmas and I used them to buy this b-e-a-oootiful new trug.  I have lots of bulbs to plant and I still haven't planted them all - woopsy!   I also bought some mini fruit trees from Thompson and Morgan, the kind that stay really small for pots on the patio, the trees are nice but there were grubs in the pots (maybe vine weevils!) so I wouldn't buy these ones.  But I'm looking forward to having 2 new apples, a pear, a plum and a cherry!

I made this cute little project one winters day.  I hope to collect lots more cute little tins to make a little display somewhere. 

My back garden raised beds still have some chard going in them, but not much else.  There's messy bits everywhere that need dealing with, and theres Still that big pile o' dirt at the back of the garden that I'm running out of inspiration for!  My potting table broke too, I need to find a new one. 

My little garden robin is still keeping me company. 

In the front garden raised beds I've been picking kale and chard all winter.  The overwintered onions and garlic are going strong too. 

Can you tell I haven't done any proper gardening since last year??! 

Luckily the flowers don't mind a neglectful gardener and carry on blooming anyway! 

How are your gardens?  Have they survived the winter?  And the storms?  I hope so!

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My homegrown harvest, July 2019.

July's been a month of raspberries.  Sooo many raspberries.  I only have autumn fruiting raspberries, but that doesn't seem to be stopping them fruiting now!

I've had loads of greens too, which I've been shredding, wilting in boiled water, then squeezing into little handfuls to freeze, so I can use it later in the year.

We had our first, one and only cherry, it was delicious, the variety is 'sweetheart'.

My 'discovery' apples started falling off the tree so I picked them all, which was a mistake as they're SUPER sour and nowhere near ripe!  They're on the windowsill, I hope they'll soak up some sun and get a bit sweeter. 

I didn't manage to grow any carrots last year so yey for carrots this year!  The variety is 'berlicum' and they're really nice. 

I've also had loads of strawberries, purple snap peas, potatoes, beets, some baby onions and a little baby garlic.

What have you been growing this month?

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My homegrown harvest, June 2019.

Things are finally growing in my garden!  These are the first potatoes of the year - it was a mix of varieties.  The potatoes aren't quite ready so I just rummaged around in the soil and pulled out some big feeling potatoes without disturbing the plants too much! 

I've had my first raspberries.  I'm slightly perturbed that these are my 'autumn bliss' raspberries and they're all coming now!  Is this climate change?  Did I prune them crazy wrong last year?  What will I eat in autumn!?

The first strawberries have arrived too, I only eat home grown strawbs so these are a proper treat.  The first ever yellow raspberries came, a small total harvest of 5 berries but there's a big cane growing already for next year.  Purple snap peas and tons of kale and chard too.

I'm trying to keep up with picking and drying home grown herbs this year, I've picked oregano and mint this month to dry.  

I trimmed the onion tops back and ended up with a washing up bowl full of onion tops!  I washed and chopped them all, froze two boxes full, and popped another box in the fridge to be used up in stir fries, fritters, Joe's omelettes and I made a particularly delicious green onion pancake too.  I thinned out my cabbage seedlings and ate them, because waste not want not. 

It's all about the berries though this month, I've been out picking them every day! 

That's about it for this month, have you been harvesting much from the garden this month?

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Dairy of a permaculture (ish) garden, June 2019.

I love it when the foxgloves flower, they're soo beautiful!

Our biggest garden-y excitement this month has been that the driveway is almost finished!  Seven 850kg bags of gravel have been spread (we may have bought one too many, but we've come up with  a plan for it!).  Joe's about to put up a new fence, there's a bin store to build and we want a couple of big pots with something pretty in by the front door (any suggestions - we want something hardy and evergreen and it's mostly shady apart from a few hours of sun in the morning).  I have a new waterbutt too, it's 250 litres and filled in one night - it's been really rainy here!  We've also had new guttering and facias so please note how nice and shiny they are because they cost £1700 (our old ones were asbestos...).

I think the gravel will be slightly less white and a bit more more pale grey once the rain's washed the dust off.  Look at this side path too - I think it's sooo nice!

The front garden raised beds are doing really good!  I've already had my first potatoes and there are beans and peas growing in with the potatoes too.  I've got carrots and beets on the way, and I've trimmed all my onions back because they were hitting the top of their protective mesh (the internet said I could trim them back to 4 inches high a couple of times during the growing season, and it would send more energy into making a bigger bulb, so we shall see).  I've had loads of kale, the sweetcorn is up and my tomatoes and peppers have flowers on them!

I've got little apples on my little apple tree! 

I've got broad beans, peas and borlotto beans in my back garden raised beds.  There are some courgettes in the other raised bed and a lot of weeds too (not pictured!).

Here's the garden in full for posterity. 

How's your garden doing?  Every time I plant a new plant a slug eats it and I'm getting fed up of that, and I had to pull up nearly all of my outside tomatoes because of blight, but otherwise I'm enjoying my garden! 

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