Diary of a Permaculture (ish) garden, March 2018.

You can have enough of snow, right?!

I definitely have, and there's more forecast for next week (which is typical as I've taken a week off work to sort the garden!).  

Sometimes the only thing to do is to sit inside and organise your seed tin.  I think it's rather beautiful now with these new card dividers I made. 

We've had a couple of sunny days in-between the rain and snow.  Last week I even slapped some suncream on my neck, it was that toasty!  I'm trying to get on top the of weeding early this year, before they take over!  They're coming out of the woodchipped area really easily right now, which is a big help. 

My raised beds still have some growth despite the sub-zero, freeze-y temperatures.  I'm really pleased with my perennial Siberian onions, they've grown loads since last month and look really healthy. 

I picked a couple of carrots that had overwintered in the raised beds, and a brilliant comedy leggy one which sadly went in the compost because slugs had eaten it!

I ordered some bare root trees and they came really quickly and were a lot bigger than I expected!  I got a cherry tree for the front garden (the variety is 'Sweetheart') and some Cherry Plums (Prunus cerasifera 'Myrobalan'). The cherry plums only cost £1.95 each and they're huge.  They're supposed to grow fast, which is what I want to cover some of the fence and block the neighbours a bit, as nice as they are I like my privacy while I'm gardening in my PJs and the one side feels really open since the new neighbour cut down all the trees.  

I don't know if you can tell from this photo, but I moved a few plants around, a Physocarpus 'Midnight' that didn't seem very happy over the other side of the garden, a Rowan tree and one of the Poundland roses my mum bought for me. 

I planted one of my cherry plums down the side garden too, there are privacy issues there too, again nice neighbours, but their garden is at least a foot taller than ours (we live on a slope!) so we can see their heads bobbing along over the fence, and it perturbs me!   I've also been weeding down here and pruned all my autumn raspberries down.  You can see I've cut the raspberry canes into smaller pieces and left them on the ground there, to kind of mulch the ground to stop weeds and so they'll rot down in situ and return their nutrients to the soil.   

I still have 2 more cherry plums to plant (they only sold them in multiples of 5!  I hope I like them!) and the cherry tree too, but currently the front garden looks like this so they'll have to wait!

I transplanted a patch of wild strawberries to the back of the garden between these two cobnuts, and planted a tiny wild garlic plant I bought (at the same time as my fruit trees) right at the back of the garden for future years harvests.

The heated propagators I bought have been working quite well, one seems better than the other, I don't know if that's down to the seeds or the propagators themselves.  I've popped my red onion seedlings in the greenhouse outside (scuse the messy greenhouse, it needs cleaning!). They were getting floppy in the conservatory so maybe it was too warm for them in there.

  

I bought some new blueberry plants too - these ones have pink berries, the variety is 'Pink Lemonade'.  I've got about 8 blueberry plants now, so I should probably stop buying them!

And here's the whole garden.

And here's a really big worm too! 

In 2017 there was a lot less snow in March, and in 2016 I was building my little greenhouse and planting potatoes and in March 2015 I still had my balcony garden! 

How's your garden this month?  I sincerely hope you have less snow than me, and I wish you lots of warm spring days. 

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Library books I've been reading.

Here's what I've been reading lately, 

Moxie - Jennifer Mathieu

Viv is fed up of boys will be boys, uniform checks and at school, so starts an anonymous feminist zine calling her classmates to action, inspired by her new feminist friend and her mum's box of 90's riot grrl paraphernalia.   I really loved this book, I would have loved it when I was younger too, but now I'm old I also identify with Viv's Mum and loved that she was given a proper personality, former riot grrl now making some compromises to get along in the world.

Someday, Someday Maybe - Lauren Graham

I loved this, but I think maybe because it's written by Lauren Graham so in my head I populated the book with Gilmore Girls characters!   Franny moved to New York and gave herself a deadline to make it big in showbiz or go home, as her deadline approaches will she stay or go.  There's a nice romance in there too :)

Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng

I loved this.  realistic and quirky characters, a moral dilemma or two to grapple with and just lovely scene setting and character building (which must have been done well because I usually hate overly descriptive books!).

Drawdown - Paul Hawken

I've renewed this library book waaaaaaaaaaay more times than I'm officially allowed!  There are 100 ideas for ways to reverse climate change in this book.  Most of them aren't things you can do yourself at home, they're more big ideas like using alternative cement, educating girls, using regenerative agriculture or repopulating the Mammoth Steppe.  Despite what could seem like dry subject matter, I've really enjoyed dipping in and out of this book, lots of scientific and social and economic matters are explained simply and it has pretty pictures too.   This book makes me both want to cling to it in hope, and buy a copy for every World leader and beat them round the head with it shouting 'do something about climate change before it's too late!'.   

Into White - Randi Pink

The premise of this book was really interesting, a teenage girl prays to be anything other than black, and wakes up white.  I'm not sure about the writing style though, I liked the basic plot, characters and some of the observations about race, but to me this read like a first draft that needed more editing.

The More you Ignore Me - Jo Brand

Alice loves The Smiths, her mum has serious mental health issues, and she has a guinea pig called Smelly.  I thought this book was just alright, with some bits I loved and a last sentence that made me say 'ahh'.

Lumberjanes - Noelle Stevenson

Friendship to the max!  All hail the kitten holy!  This is a super cute graphic novel, with relatable female characters getting into all sorts of supernatural adventures at summer camp.  I think I'm a Riley.

My absolute darling - Gabriel Tallent

I really didn't like this book.  Turtle, our teenage girl main character, is raped and tortured by her father, which a. I don't really want to read about, and b. the sexual abuse was written about in such a way that it seemed pornographic and titillating, I'm guessing it's representing the views of the abuser and manipulated abused, rather than those of the author (I hope) but it was horrific and waaaay too much for me.  I've seen so many good reviews for this but I hated it and skipped through it to the end to see how things turned out for Turtle.  I'm trying to read more books written by men but I don't think this was a good first choice!

What have you been reading? 

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I made a thing, crochet sleepy head mice.

I made a cute crochet jellyfish for my new niece, but her big sisters needed presents too!

I wanted to make a baby somethings, because they have a new baby in their lives, and I fell in love with these little baby mice in their own leafy beds.

I used this lovely free pattern for a mouse sleepy head from Ravelry.  I pretty much followed the pattern for the mice, but I just did htr stitches for the whole bed, which made it easier, using this method meant the bed only needed 5 rounds, and I missed off the little leaf from the bed too.

I used DK yarn, and a 2.5mm hook for the mice and a 3.5mm hook for the beds and blankets, the eyes are teeny tiny safety eyes. 

I've actually started up a Facebook page for my crochet-ty makes, just to take orders from friends and family on a kind of casual basis to make a few extra pennies, and I've already been commissioned to make a pair of guinea pigs!  Check it out if you'd like to.

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Diary of a suburban permaculture(ish) garden, February 2018.

Mostly, the ground has been frozen this month, so I've not been able to do much gardening.  

We had a couple of sunshiney days and we spent most of them painting the new fence, which was a bit of a waste of sunshine - but we didn't know such snow was on it's way!  As you can see the old fence was on the verge of collapsing, it was also rotten on the bottom.  Please note - the fortifications made from sticks and pots and boxes were to prevent my plants from being stomped on, the ground was too hard to dig anything up and move it! 

 Ta-dah, new fences!  The new lady next door paid for them too, thank goodness!  I could have done without the mortification of our paint dripping down onto the gravel boards next door, and the neighbour calling over the fence to say so - but she was pretty nice about it and I sent Joe round with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water to clean it up!  I like the fence on this side so much better painted white, it makes the garden seem so much lighter and bigger.  (it does look a bit grey in this photo, but that's because it was a grey day, in the sun it looks much better!) 

Also when it's not been frozen I've been watering the garden!  I don't know if that's a totally misguided idea or not, but my waterbutt gets full to the point of overflowing, and they do say the best place to store water is in the ground, so I'm giving it a go!  I'm not doing it when it's waterlogged or anything, but my trees and pots have all had a good watering and so has the back hedge. 

I got the last of the spring bulbs in (maybe they'll flower next year!) and I bought a pretty Thrift and a sedum from the supermarket.  I love thrift, it grows on the hill with the funicular railway on it in Aberystwyth, which has happy memories from my childhood holidays, university days, day trips with my mum and holidays with my Joe - it's a happy plant for me!  My mum treated me to three roses (from the pound shop, but they look lovely healthy plants!) that I think'll look lovely jubbly along the new fence.

The onion seeds I planted last month have popped up!  They did nothing in the (unheated) conservatory, so I moved them to the dining room by the radiator and they took a couple of days to sprout.  I've invested in a couple of heated propagators, because I have peppers and leeks and delphiniums and some herbs I want to get an early start on and there's not enough room by the radiator!  I got two of these £14 ones from Wilkos, which is quite a bargainous price, I'll let you know if they're any good. 

That's it for my garden this month, I'm longing for the snow to bugger off, I want to play outside!  How's yours?

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