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! 

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Diary of a permaculture (ish) garden, April 2019.

I love this time of year when all the forget-me-nots go 'wooosh' and take over for a while.  They're one of my favourite flowers.

The weigela is flowering and the lilac too, the lilac smells so lovely. I always wanted a purple lilac to go with the white one at the bottom of the garden.  It turns out I already had one - I just had to let the branches from the old tree stump grow and bloom.  The people who had our house before us were monsters, who cuts down a lilac tree?!

My apple trees are blossoming too!  There's just one that didn't blossom last year and hasn't this year either, I don't know what's up with it, but if it doesn't buck it's ideas up I might have to dig it up.

This is my set up from last weekend, when I decided to empty my worm compost bin.  I thought it wasn't working ok because I'd never got any worm wee liquid out of it for the 3 years I've had it.  But turns out the tap was just on wonky and I there was a whole bucketful of liquid, plus a washing up bowl and half a bucket of worm castings.  I've reset the wormery with new coir bedding mixed with shredded paper and I'm going to start feeding them differently, chopping their food scraps into smaller pieces and burying it under the surface, it's supposed to reduce pests (like slugs, I found some mega slugs cleaning out the wormery!) and make decomposition quicker.  

All my fruit and nut trees have received a mulch of worm castings to give them a boost this growing season. 

In the front garden I planted my onions and garlic at the start of the month and they'd sprouted up by the end of the month!  I've planted some carrots and beets too that you can see in the second photo.

My onions are covered with enviromesh over part of a little greenhouse from wilkos, which was the easiest way to make a frame I could think of considering I have terrible woodwork skills.  I got onion fly on my onions last year and the only way to keep them off is to keep your onions covered so that's my plan this year. 

I've also planted my tomatoes and peppers out into my covered raised bed, I think it's warm enough now and they were taking over my kitchen worktops!  Some test tomatoes have gone out without cover into my upcycled big tomato basket in the back garden, I'll soon find out if it's warm enough out there!

 

I'm experimenting with biochar this year, you soak the charcoal-y bits in liquid fertiliser for a while, then mix it with your compost.  It releases the fertiliser and helps retain moisture in the soil too, I'm wondering if it will help if we get another super hot summer.  I've put it in my new raised beds in the front garden to test it out.

Look at this messy area!  Joe's taken the paving slabs off the weird steps that go nowhere, to lay a base for the bin store in the front garden, so now we have a muddy mound!  We're hoping to get someone in to look at the back garden soon to help us sort out a nice patio.  We dragged out a water feature left here by the previous house owners, so I'm going to clean that up and find a spot for it.

The side garden is looking nice, it's one of my favourite parts of the garden.  Only one of my tulips has come up successfully, but at least it's a pretty one! 

How's your garden doing? 

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

My suburban garden harvest, September 2016.

I've had a few little bits and bobs of pickings to pick in my garden this month.  

I was really happy to get my first patty pan squash, it's only little but it's cute.  I'm not sure how to eat it though, any ideas?

I had my first cherry tomatoes (from plants grown from seed, variety 'Tiny Tim' and my first San Marzano tomato too. 

The tomatoes in the paper bag and the cucumber came to me as a kind gift from one of the lovely housebound ladies I choose library books for at work, we write letters to each other about our gardens so she knows I've not had much in the way of tomatoes this year!

My first pepper ripened too!  The variety is 'lipstick pepper' and they're a sweet pepper I've been growing in my conservatory since spring.

Another first, the first raspberries.  These are 'autumn bliss', and the berries seem so big and delicious this year.

So, not a massive harvest, but enough to keep me a happy bunny!

How has your garden been this month?  Have you had lots to harvest?

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Garden, May 2016.

I've decided that there's gardening weather and there's enjoying the garden weather.  We've had a good mix of both this month, grey days where you can dig loads without getting too sweaty, and lovely warm days where no digging is allowed, only sitting in the sun with a cold drink will do.  

Despite neglecting the garden to stress about our wedding, and if you ignore the weedy patches at the back, the garden is looking quite pretty this month. 

My main project has been digging the weeds (so many weeds) from the back part of the garden.  The nettles have grown so fast, they're as tall as me! 

Here's a before photo, and one of where I'm up to now.   I'm digging the weeds and an inch or two of soil up with it to try to remove as much of the roots as I can.  I did the same to the front half of this garden bed last year, it was time consuming but there are hardly any perennial weeds left, so definitely worth it.

Mum gave me some of the compost from her compost heap, so I've been sprinkling that all around the garden.

I've planted out some tomatoes (San Marzano and Mortgage Lifter) into the Belfast sink, my peppers have had a slow start but they're doing ok, and my first row of organic rainbow carrots have gone into the front garden raised bed.  I've planted out purple peas by my wigwam, and a row of beetroot (there was some lettuce too but that's been nibbled!).  Everything seems a bit slow in the garden at the moment, is it the same for you?

The side garden has pretty much recovered from being stomped on while having new fence now.  I've replanted all of the herbs and added a couple of apple trees I picked up on sale (they cost £2.50 and £3.50 each).  One is a 'Discovery' apple and the other is a family apple tree, it has 'Golden Delicious' and 'Champion' apples on the same tree.  Witchcraft I say! 

I also bought loads of clematis (bargain £1.77 from Morrisons) to climb up the new fence.  We didn't know the neighbours had arranged curvy fences, we don't like them and they don't give enough privacy so I'm trying to solve the problem with trees and climbers! 

Speaking of clematis, this one was in a pot in the garden when we moved in.  I planted it up the fence last year but it didn't flower.  This year I put a greenhouse in front of it, which apparently it loves because it's flowering away and looking so beautiful!

Last May I was digging up the first half of the weeds, the garden looked so different then!

How are your gardens this month?

I'm trying to spend 20 minutes a day in the garden, and I'm posting about it on Instagram.

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Garden March 2016.

I've been planting seeds this month!  Only a few, as it's still a bit chilly, but seed planting time makes me soo happy! 

I planted some 'Lipstick' sweet peppers, they're an early variety and I bought the seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue.  They're currently hanging out on a sunny windowsill under polythene while they germinate.

I also planted some 'Casablanca' potatoes in some slightly too small pots.  I just want a few new potatoes really, so hopefully my experiment will be a success.  

My other big big excitement this month has been taking delivery of my new shed and mini greenhouse.  So far just the greenhouse up, it arrived flat packed and I would have liked to have done it myself but I managed to hammer in 3 nails, badly, before having a strop.  I would never have been able to build it on my own, it didn't have any holes pre-drilled or proper measurements.  I have IKEA level DIY skills, good job I had a boy to kindly help me! 

This is what the area looked like before, 

And after!  (I've been painting the fence 'Jasmine White' too!)

I'm about half way there with the fence painting.  

Here's my little garden chum this month, a ladybird warming herself up in the new greenhouse.

This time last year I still had my balcony garden at the flat, all those spring bulbs in pots are planted in my garden now! 

I can't wait for things to start growing properly now it's spring!

I've already got forget me nots and tulips coming up!

I want to garden plastic free this year as far as possible, here are some articles I've been using for inspiration and research,

3 cool tips for plastic free gardening from My plastic free life.  There are also good ideas and ponderings in this post on plastic free planting and replanting too.

Ways to get plastic out of your vegetable garden from Rodale's organic life. 

This article from Soft Landings seems to have some useful info on what types of plastics are safer to use.

What's happening in your garden this month?  And do you garden plastic free?  It is even possible?!

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *