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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My garden, October 2015.

It's been feeling very autumnal this month, and to be honest I've neglected the garden a bit because it's been chilly and because I've been super busy!

I'm really happy with my raised bed (I filled it using the lasagna method!).  I've planted garlic and onion sets, and leek, rainbow chard and spinach beet from seed, and they've all sprouted and they're growing!   I planted some strawberry plants down the edges too.

My great excitement has been this sunflower head.  I harvested a few seeds for myself, to plant next year, then hung the head up with some string on the fence.  I meant it to be a bird feeder, but it's been attracting my furry friends too!

Talking of seed heads, did you know snapdragon seed heads look like little skulls? 

I don't want to speak too soon, but there's a courgette growing here that hasn't been eaten by a slug!!!!! (yet!)

I planted some wildflower seeds and butterfly friendly seeds in the side garden, this is the only thing that's grown from those seeds.  I think it's nigella, it's really pretty!

And here's the whole garden.  It needs some love this month, and possibly a water, it hasn't rained for ages!  I'll get round to that next week, this week is crazy (extra work, 2 birthdays, a wedding, naming ceremony and a friend visting!  Eeep!).

This is the garden from another angle.  One day it'll be a lovely patio area with a pizza oven.  For now, it's a mess, with some pots of herbs and tomatoes.

How's your garden this month?

Linking up with Green Thumb Thursday.

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Garden, September 2015.

Suddenly it's autumn!

I've been planting lots of bulbs this month, in big pots and in any spaces I can find in the garden too.

My garden chum this month was this big ol' spider!

Quite often I'm kept company by one or two squirrels, who race along the fence and jump into the trees from the shed roof.  It makes quite a noise!  This one is Pirate Pete, the one eyed squirrel!

 

The lilac tree we cut down last month has made lots of new sprouts, I'm so glad it's growing back!

Most excitingly, we got raised beds for the front garden!  Last month I was talking about digging bigger beds in the front garden, but I read a book about front garden growing and decided raised beds would be quicker and a lot less digging.  

I've filled one up so far, using the lasagna method (lots of layers!), and planted onion sets, garlic, rainbow chard and perpetual spinach seeds, leek seeds and some pansies from a bargain 20p pack of almost dead plug plants from Wilkos.  

As well as being excited about having some extra growing space, with nicer soil, spending all weekend in the front garden doing something unusual means I've spoken to loads of neighbours I haven't met before.  Lovely!

I had some onion sets left over, so I popped them in the garden bed, in the space where the broad beans were.  I don't hold out much hope for these ones, the soil isn't great in this bed.  I'm planning to harvest some of these onions early, and to eat the leaves, so maybe I'll get something out of them. 

 

This is a very confused strawberry!

There are still some pretty, colourful flowers!

This is the garden bed at the side of the house.  In the foreground you can see my courgette plant (it's grown lots of courgettes, sadly slugs keep getting to them before I do), and my autumn raspberries, in the background are lots of lovely herbs. 

Here's the garden in all it's glory!

What's happening in your gardens this month?

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Harvest, July 2015.

This month my harvest has been small again!

I've had a few handfuls of strawberries, these were the last.

And my first courgette.

Things are still slow in the garden, I think the soil needs some love (although it's a good texture, nothing's growing very well, I think it needs some fertiliser and compost!).  

Have you harvested anything from your garden this month?

Linking up with Harvest Mondays.