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 suburban garden harvest, August 2016.

This plate just makes me smile.  I think it's such a beautiful little harvest!  And I picked my first carrots and purple sugar snap peas!

I've been picking the last of the onions I planted in my front garden raised beds last autumn, they're small but perfectly formed.

I've only planted a few broad bean plants, so I've not had a massive harvest, but enough to add to some chickpeas to make falafels.

Blueberries started ripening this month too!  I've had a fair few little handfuls, enough for Joe to enjoy for breakfast.  One of the strawberries in the raised beds has had a few late fruits on.

I made some lovely herby roast potatoes with my homegrown rosemary and thyme - yum!

Speaking of potatoes, I emptied my second pot of Casablanca potaotes, it was definitely worth leaving them in the pot for longer, I got loads more! 

I feel like this month has been a happy harvest month, I've eaten so much lovely homegrown food! 

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

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How to grow your own mint from cuttings.

Mint is one of my favourite things to grow and luckily it's really easy to grow your own from a few cuttings.  

First cut a couple of sprigs of mint, strip the leaves off the bottoms of the stems leaving just the very top ones.  If you don't have your own mint plants, see if a friend will give you a couple of mint cuttings.

Pop the mint stalks into a vase of water, and wait for roots to appear.  It takes a week or so for the mint cuttings to root.

Fill a plant pot with peat free soil and use a dibber to poke some holes for your new mint plants to go in.  Put the plant-lets in the holes, being careful and gentle with the roots, then fill in with extra soil and firm down.

That's it, your mint cuttings have become plants, make sure you keep them watered while they're settling in and unless you want a garden full of mint, grow the plants in pots or containers!

What's your favourite way to use mint?  I like mint tea, but I mostly like the smell of it wafting around the garden.

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My home grown harvest, April 2016.

I'm still waiting for anything new to grow, but I'm eating things I planted last year! 

I planted pretty red spring onions in the pots either side of our front door last autumn and they're just ready to pick now.  I love the colour of them!  I used these ones in a chickpea and couscous concoction that's nice as a side dish or to take to work for lunch.

The garlic chives are finally big enough to harvest!  You can definitely tell the difference between these and normal chives!  Garlicky!

The good old rainbow chard is still going, I can't believe how much I've had from 6 little plants!

What are you growing and harvesting this month?  Do you have any early crops to eat yet?

Linking up with Harvest Mondays.

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My garden, November 2015.

Life stuff has got in the way of gardening this month, I haven't had the time or desire to do very much! 

I did make time to gather lots of leaves to make leaf mould with.  I have about 5 bags full, which will hopefully be ready by next autumn.  I have no shame, I've even been collecting fallen leaves from the cherry trees on my road.

So here is a photo of my garden, un-gardened this month!  There are still some flowers, I can see this orange one from my kitchen window and it makes me smile each time.

Luckily, things keep growing whether you ignore them or not!  My garlic and onions are growing well in my front garden raised bed.  I have clematis, spring onions and pansies growing in the pots by the door.  One clematis is growing much better than the other, despite them being bought at the same time!  Very mysterious!

I've thrown some big twigs into this corner of the front garden to make a mini log pile, which is sooo good for wildlife.

I collected some seeds from a corriander plant, I wanted to collect enough to use when I'm cooking but as there aren't many I'll replant these ones next year!

It's very autumnal out there!

Have you managed to get out into the garden this month?

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My Garden Harvest, August 2015.

My little garden has done a bit better this month!

My first raspberries!  These are the first raspberries I've ever eaten that didn't need sugar on them, they're sweet and delicious just as they are.

The variety is Autumn Bliss and I'll definitely be buying some more plants!

This is my first ever homegrown spring onion.  It was so sweet and tasty.  I ate it in a vegan quesadilla. 

I picked my first spinach beet.  And I ate it in a stir fry!  And I've had lots more spinach beet and rainbow chard too.

I picked my first lot of broad beans, and made broad bean falafel, with home grown coriander too!

We have lots of other herbs ready for picking at the moment,  I've been putting lovely basil and thyme in homemade pasta sauces all month.

A naughty slug has eaten all of my courgettes, which I am most upset about!

Have you harvested much this month?

Linking up with Harvest Mondays.

Gardening, May 2015.

I can't show you progress photos of our new house yet (It's still in the 'it gets worse before it gets better' stage! It will get better, right? Right!?) but progress is definitely being made in the garden.

I can't do painting or sanding, because I have pretty bad asthma, so whenever Joe or my mum are at the house doing painting I come too and do a spot of digging.

My main job has been digging out the grass and weeds that had grown over this raised bed thingy.  I've nearly finished the first half, there's more weeds out of shot on the right hand side of this photo, but I'm going to dig them next year I think.

I even did my first bit of planting, some mini-pops baby sweetcorn and some chives.  I started making a wigwam for sweet peas to grow up too.

I want the garden to be mixed flowers and vegetables, not in rows, all mixed up.  I can't find any online photos or inspiration for this though, only the book The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler.  If you garden this way or can point me in the way of more info or inspiration I'd really appreciate that!

I've been kept company by this baby blackbird, mummy and daddy blackbird, and lots of robins.  Also a huuuge rat, but I'm trying to poison her (I don't usually mind rats but this one is huge, not scared of humans and comes too close to the conservatory doors for my liking!).

There's a lovely white lilac at the end of the garden, and this pink flowery tree I can never remember the name of (it's something that starts with 'ooo' or 'yoou').

I spent a long time sorting this honeysuckle, that had completely slumped over and taken the trellis off the fence with it.  Once I'd cut it back a bit, I found that there was a rose under it!  I've put wires on the fence and I'm trying to train the honeysuckle to cover it.  I found a neglected clematis in a pot, and some ivy so I've planted them too to cover the two tone fence. 

It's funny, cos someone obviously loved this garden once, there's a shed full of tools, piles of pots and canes and some lovely plants hidden under the weeds.  The only things we've bought for the garden have been a lawn mower and some seeds, the rest has been provided for us by the ghost of gardeners past.  It's sad that it's been neglected for a while, but I'm enjoying making it look like a proper garden again.

I've planted some seeds in some pots full of weeds I found at the back of the garden (I removed the weeds first!).  In the pots below there are sunflowers and livingstone dasies, courgettes and competition sunflowers (that's not the variety, me and Joe are having a competition to see who can grow the tallest sunflower!).  I've got a mini nursery in another corner, with kale, cabbage, lettuce, broad beans, garlic chives and borage sown, so I have seedlings to plant when I've finished my last bit of bed digging.

What's happening in your garden this month?