Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, February and March 2019.

Hello!  The garden is waking up (and so am I, I always want to hibernate through the winter!).  There's some blossom already, beautiful pink almond blossom and white on the new cherry plum trees.

The crocus have been and gone.

In the front garden I've planted a couple of patches of zingy yellow daffodils.  Some by the new cherry tree just as you come onto the drive, a pretty little springy area with some snowdrops, muscari, daffs and a hellebore my mum bought me.  The other in the corner by the fence, there's a new rose (a David Austen rose called 'generous gardener' that was my lovely valentines present) and some daffodils at the front of the bed.  It's always surprising how a few cheap little bulbs can make a garden look pretty and well cared for in the spring.

The new raised beds have gone up in the front garden!!!  I'm soooo pleased with them!

Joe's filling them up with the soil he dug out of the drive when he was levelling it, and I'm adding layers of garden clippings and cardboard to try to create a lasagne bed effect.  The driveway soil is slightly clay-ish, so I'm wanting to break it up with some organic matter, and hoping it'll all rot down together into something nice.  When I get nearer the top of the beds I'll add some bagged compost (I went to get some from Homebase the other day and there was some on offer for £2 a bag - so I bought 8 bags!) and some biochar (which is my new experiment this year).

We've had to have all our gutters replaced this month and I had to move my hotbin composter out of the way.  So it seemed a good opportunity to empty it.  About a million worms were living in there!  My back garden raised beds have had a nice top dressing of compost ready for the new growing season.

I've started planting some seeds in the heated propagator (tomatoes and peppers), chitting some potatoes (Jazzy, Nicola, Kestrel and Swift, I have no idea what I'm doing with potatoes so I just bought a small packet of several varieties to try.  The tray I'm chitting them in is the innards of Joe's Lego advent calendar and it's perfect for the job!) and I have my onions and some supermarket organic garlic ready and waiting to get going. 

Here's the garden in full, for posterity! 

How's your garden?  Have you survived the winter?  Are you ready for spring?

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, September and October 2018.

Like every good husband should, mine bought me a big-arse gardening knife for my birthday!  

Ooo yes, it's very effective at getting up big weedy roots - I'm most happy with it.

The front garden is coming on, we hired a skip for Joe to put his diggings into, and completely filled it (we also emptied the loft - don't you love it when the person you bought the house from leaves the loft full of 10 dismantled flatpack cupboards and a bed, thanks for that!).  The next step is to put some hardcore down and compress it down by hiring a whacker plate, then it'll be time to put gravel down.  I'll be relieved when it's done! 

I've been topping up the garden beds with some of the soil dug up from the drive.  This little raised bed is in the corner of the front garden, I used the lasagne method of layering drive-soil, leaves and branches, more drive-soil then a top layer of more leaves.  The top layer of leaves is to stop cats pooping on the soil!  The drive-soil is pretty clay-y, so I hope it'll get better over winter, especially with the garden waste mixed in to help break it up.  

I did the same for the last weedy corner down the side garden.  I hoed and weeded the worst of it, covered in a layer of garden waste (mostly buddleia and raspberry prunings), then a thick layer of driveway soil, I planted some narcissus and tulip bulbs in the soil, and some strawberry plants transferred from around the garden, then covered the whole of the side garden in a layer of hedge trimmings (again - cat poop deterrent).  It looks so much better without all the weeds.

I did the nice autumn activity of collecting up seed heads and acorns and planting them up - we'll see what comes up in spring!

I've been growing some ginger in a pot outside all summer.  I lifted it gently to see how it had grown, which wasn't very much.  I reburied it to let it grow more, but it got frosted and looks super unhappy now!  I'll try again next year though, if we keep having hot summers, and I get an early start with it in the conservatory I should be able to get a better harvest. 

That's kind of it for the garden for the last few months.  The weather has been so rainy, and I've needed some time to look after my family the last couple of months, both of which have meant less time for gardening.  I'll still pop out for a while if we get any dry days, but I've said goodbye to proper gardening for the year, and started dreaming and saving for next year's projects!

I did have a final gardening flourish this afternoon though, in the almost drizzle, grey skies and extreme wind, I planted a tree.  It's a crab apple called 'Red Sentinel', it'll have little red fruits that stay on through the autumn and winter.  I had to trim the roots to fit it into the pot (aka stainless steel bin), I hope it will survive!

How's your garden this month?

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Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, August 2018.

There's been some lovely sunshine for gardening in this month.

It's all going on this month!  Joe's digging up the driveway, to level it and then lay hardcore and gravel.  He's digging up lots of soil, which he's making into a pile at the bottom of the garden.  I've been sieving the soil and topping up my raised beds with it, and when the driveway is finished I'll sieve some more of the soil and put it in my front garden raised beds.  

Here is drive progress...

I've also been making progress with the side garden.  I think I've said before that I basically don't weed unless I have another plant to replace the weed with - to cut down on the work of constantly weeding an area and trying to keep the soil clear, when mother nature clearly has different ideas.  I focused on this area under my Discovery apple tree this year, and I think it's been pretty successful.  

If you look at the far left of the photo above you can see all those green weeds, they're next on my to weed list, but maybe next year! 

I've planted strawberries, wild strawberries, chives, garlic chives, Siberian perennial onions, red and white clover, curry plant, rosemary, sedum and yellow creeping Jenny, as well as daffodil and tulip bulbs for the spring.  

I'm pretty happy with my raised beds, I'm eagerly awaiting my first courgette of the year - I was soo late planting this year!  I've had loads of kale and some chard, but I'm still waiting to see if my other late plantings of cauliflower, sweetcorn and shallots are going to do anything.  

I'm also waiting for all these tomatoes to go red.  Putting this planter on the corner here, which is the sunniest part of the garden was the best decision - these are the healthiest tomatoes I've ever grown.  The beans and peppers I've tried to grow round the sides of the basket haven't worked so well though, I'll have to rethink it ready for next year.

All of my blueberry plants have been repotted, and I've been rewarded with lots of blueberries and loads of new growth too. 

That's about it for the garden this month.  It must be autumn, because my 'autumn joy' sedum has started flowering 

How's your garden this month?

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Dairy of a permaculture (ish) garden, July 2018.

It's been another month of it's-too-hot-to-garden weather here, with a bit of it's-too-wet-to-garden weather at the end!

I'm looking forward to these apples ripening.  I think I shouldn't have let this tree make apples this year because it's a new one, but they're so pretty I couldn't resist. 

My side garden, which is the fruity bit of the garden, is looking good.   There's just one bit at the far end by the gate that's full of weeds, the rest is full of lovely productive fruit trees, raspberries and herbs, yey!  And I'm clearing the weeds away slowly when I have new plants to replace them with.  This month I've added chives and garlic chives, rosemary, strawberries and a tiny rose to replace some of the weeds.

My apple tree's recovering from it's ant/aphid attack last month.  I noticed a few aphids coming back, and I was about to start picking them off when I spotted a mama ladybird and some babies, so I'm going to leave it to nature to sort out.  Thanks nature.

I'm very late with all my planting this year (For which I blame the weather.  For which I blame climate change.  For which I blame our governments for doing nothing about it.  Anyway...) so I've just got round to planting out courgettes and shallots. 

I'm surprised the shallots actually sprouted because I bought them from the Wilko's sale for 50p and had them hanging round the house for a couple of months after that.  My one courgette plant looks ok in this photos, but actually isn't very happy in the middle of the clover cover crop, so I think I'll remove the clover to give it more of a chance.

Everything looks a mess at the moment (although I have since straightened up the falling over kale at least!) especially round the raised beds.  I've let the chard flower, and it's attracted so many hoverflies and other interesting insects that I can't bring myself to cut it back, even if it is flopping all over the place.

I've planted some tiny and sorry looking leeks I started off months ago into this raised bed, and you can see the ginger (in the terracotta pot) has been enjoying the heat, I wonder if it'll flower, of if I'll get any ginger root to harvest!?

I'm most proud of this little space.  I got rid of an old rickety garden table and replaced it with a tea trolley I bought for £2 that I'm going to modify into a potting bench.  There's room now for a couple of chairs so we can sit outside together.

Can you see my tomatoes in my big basket planter?  They've gone for it this month!  There are a few cherry tomatoes waiting to ripen on them already, which isn't bad because I planted them really late.  I planted purple mange tout round the edges of the basket and I've been picking lots of those too.

It rained!  And it filled my waterbutt all the way up!  And it's raining again now.  Thank goodness. 

I chopped down all the gone-over foxgloves and all the crispy bits of things that got fried in the 30 degree heat, the garden looks a little bare but I'm sure it'll bounce back in a couple of weeks.

That's it for my garden this month. I'll leave you with this pretty white flower, I can't remember the name of the plant right now, but the flower bud starts off like a little box and then they burst open into these beautiful blooms. 

How's your garden growing? 

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