How I made my washing up bowl pond.

The newest addition to my garden is a cute little washing up pond.  I don't have room for a big pond, but any amount of water is good for attracting wildlife and bringing balance to the garden.

I was inspired by the RSPB, who recommend making mini ponds as part of it's 'homes for nature' scheme, and you can find their instructions here, but this is what I did to make my very own washing up bowl pond, 

You will need,

a washing up bowl

gravel

stones

sticks

terracotta plant pots

rainwater

pond weed

and tools, a spade and a spirit level

Your little pond needs to be in a spot where it's light but not in full on sunshine all day.  The first step is to just dig a hole that your washing up bowl will fit into.

Next, use a spirit level to check the bowl is level and adjust the hole accordingly if necessary. 

Pop the washing up bowl in the hole and fill in any big gaps round the sides with soil.  Then you get to do the fun bit - making a nice little habitat for your underwater friends.  I added gravel to the base and a little terracotta pot for critters to hide in.  It's a really good idea to have a pile of stones and a stick to act as a ramp in and out of the pond so no-one gets stuck in there if they fall in (hedgehogs, I'm looking at you!).

Fill your mini pond with rainwater and add some pond weed.  My mum has a pond, so she kindly gave me some water, weed and frogspawn to start my pond off, but this isn't essential - the wildlife will find your pond all on it's own!  If you have some big stones and gravel then add them round the edges of the washing up bowl pond to make it look pretty, and to provide an extra habitat too.  The broken plant pot is there to hopefully tempt a frog or two to hang out by the pond!

For a final flourish I planted some mind your own business (also dug up from around mums pond!) round the edge of the pond to hide the top of the washing up bowl a little bit.

And that's it.  Because I added water from an established pond I already have lots of wildlife in my mini pond.  I've spotted freshwater shrimp, water fleas, water snails and tadpoles.  It's well exciting.

My next plan?  Washing up bowl ponds all over the garden, and a bin lid bog area!

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

 

Diary of a suburban edible garden, March 2017.

I'm so busy this month in the garden, I have so much I want to get done!

I've been planting seeds all over the place, down the side garden I've planted Californian poppy, crimson clover and vetch seeds around my apple tree.  Clover and vetch are used as green manures, their roots help the soil structure and fix nitrogen, I'm hoping by planting them here I can improve the soil a little, it's really poor in this bed.  I've also planted a little clematis up the fence at the back.

Lots of raspberry suckers have popped up this spring.  I'm really happy about that, because yey, I get free plants and free food!  Nothing else really grows very happily here, apart from weeds and Mediterranean herbs, so if the raspberries want to take over that's fine by me! 

I made a cute little washing up bowl pond this month.  This is recommended by the RSPB as a good way to attract wildlife into your garden.  Mum gave me a bucket o' pond weed and frogspawn from her pond so I'm really hoping I get some frogs!

I decided it was high time I cleaned out my greenhouse, it's all shiny now.  And I've planted a LOT of seeds (see here for a list of everything I'm planting).  That packet of mixed perennials cost about 70p on sale last year, I can't wait to see what grows from it! 

I've been seed starting in cut down loo rolls and egg boxes, and propagating in our conservatory.  I'm starting the seeds in there, then moving them to the greenhouse once they've grown on a bit.

Look at the buds on these blueberries - can't wait!  'Scuse the weeds.

Joe's been working hard on the hedge at the back of the garden.  He's trimmed a lot off the height, the only problem is it's quite thin now and people walking down the alley keep noseying in our garden! 

The next job is to dig away some of that bank of soil at the base of the hedge and reclaim the garden!  The soil there comes out several feet and we're going to have to put that soil somewhere, soooo... I bought a couple of raised beds.  They're phase one of our project to get rid of the (horrible, patchy, weedy, bumpy) lawn.  I've only put one together so far, but there's another exactly the same.  We're going to fill them with soil and plant them up, then start mulching and planting over the lawn.  Until it's all gone.  Buh-bye lawn. 

It's looking very 'work in progress' right now.  I must finish painting the fence before summer kicks in and there's too many plants to get through.  I've got to get rid of that table too, it's been in the middle of the garden for ever, can you tell I'm not quite sure what to do with it! 

How's your garden this month?

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Garden Bits and Bobs...March...Planting Garlic and a Balcony Pond...

I've been playing on my balcony!  

I took my windowsill veggies (spinach, spring onions and kale, they weren't looking too happy!) and some sprouty garlic from the fridge, and planted them in a pot to put outside...

While I was out there I was sooo happy to see the bulbs I planted are coming up (daffodils, crocus and snowdrops) and my pansies are flowering...

And when I looked closer I noticed the forget me nots I dug up from mums garden last year are flowering too.  Forget me nots are my favourite flower ever. 

Oh yeah, and I made a pond.  Or at least a water feature!  This consists of a £2 plant pot, a solar fountain off ebay and will be filled with some plants nicked from Mums pond when the water warms up a bit.  I'm hoping the water might attract some different insects to my balcony and keep the atmosphere from drying out so much when it's really hot and gets direct sunshine in the summer.

Since then it's done a big, big snow on top of everything (photo includes part of my pink dressing gown sleeve, for your viewing pleasure).  Hope my little plants survive!

Are you doing anything garden-y, or waiting for nicer weather?

Garden visit, the allotments and polytunnels at CAT.

Garden visits is a (new) blog series where I visit gardens, then blog about them!

On our holidays we visited the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Machynlleth Wales.  

There are several allotments and polytunnels at CAT, and they gave me serious garden envy.  

Before you enter the Big Polytunnel there are some experimental raised beds to check out.  The round bed demonstrates different mulches and ground covers, from slate and plastic sheeting to oregano, wild strawberries and periwinkle. I love the cute little pond in the middle!

The Big Polytunnel is amazing, I really want a polytunnel but I don't have a big enough garden.  I would totally put one in the front garden, but sadly Joe isn't down with that.  The polytunnel at CAT has beautiful flowers, grapes, figs lots of crops and a pond.  It's lovely to hang out for a while and poke about, it's so big there's lots of room to wander round and it has natural ventilation from the slate beds below, so it's not too sticky and hot.

There are two allotments on site, the smaller of the two being the Whole Home Garden (part of an example of an eco friendly home).

The allotment is surrounded by these espaliered fruit trees and currant bushes. 

There are lots of raised beds, as well as some areas with herbs and trees and flowers.  I think I could fit a little hoop tunnel like the one in this photo, over my front garden raised bed - it's not a polytunnel but it'll do a similar kind of job.

I really love these cobweb plant supports.

The conservatory of the Whole Home really inspired me to make the most of our conservatory.  I won't be growing a grape vine in there (not this year at least!) but I can definitely make room to grow more peppers and to try growing tomatoes in there this year.  I'd like some kind of citrus tree too.

The second allotment is a huge showcase of lots of organic growing methods.  Can I please draw your attention to the size of those leeks! 

The allotment is fenced off by a living willow archway, fence and tunnel!

There are little details everywhere at CAT that show love and care for wildlife.  Piles of sticks are left all over the place for critters to live in, but this is a pretty impressive bug house with a herb planter on top.

Even the walls have insect habitat built in.

If you have a spare bath hanging around you could always turn it into a raised bed!  See the planting in the back bed, it's all good for pollinators and I was excited to see crimson clover because that's something I'm growing this year.

The nice man in the Small Polytunnel (so called by the CAT staff, but it seemed a very large polytunnel to me!)  let me have a wander through as well, although it was roasting hot in there so I didn't linger for much of a chat.  Look at all those little plants waiting to go out, there were so many courgettes and squashes and peppers, and so many tomatoes all the way down the middle.  I told you, serious polytunnel envy.   

I went away from my visit to CAT totally inspired and empowered (and dreaming of winning the lottery and being able to have a much bigger garden!).  There's also a forest garden at CAT, but I'll show you that another time.

For more info on CAT check out their website.

Have you been to CAT?  What did you think?

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Garden Update...Pretty Pond, Pumpkin Baby, Plums, Flowers, Monster Growth and First Harvest...

These are some photos from my Mums garden from a few weeks ago, it's a bit more autumnal now and most of the fruit and veg are just about coming to an end.

The pond we dug when we moved there is looking lovely, and so is the garden...

In my little veggie plot I have lovely nasturtiums growing, huge broad beans, enormous pumpkin leaves, and mini sweet corn coming.  The spinach, quinoa and lettuce that I planted a couple of weeks ago has pretty much failed to do anything.

There's even a tiny pumpkin baby making an appearance beneath the giant leaves...

My sunflower has flowered...

There are plums on the plum tree...

And here's my first little harvest, some broad beans and a courgette.  I prefer to pick my courgettes when they're a bit on the smaller size, I think they're tastier.  I picked 2 more courgettes today and there are more coming on the plant too!

How do your gardens grow?

Diary of a suburban edible garden, June 2017.

My wish came true and there's a frog in the garden.  Nowhere near the little pond I made though!  I think he was hiding in the long grass and we disturbed him when Joe mowed the lawn.

I was leaving the lawn long this year, but I think I saw a rat so I'm getting rid of any ratty hidey places.  It's a shame because we've had lovely wildlife this year, big beetles, all sorts of bees and wasps and insects, sparrows, and this little frog, and I think they've all been using the long grass to hide in. 

Joe's been giving me a hand this week and the garden's looking a bit neater and nicer. There are a few piles of grass about waiting to go into the compost bin and I still haven't finished painting the fence, but there are definitely less weeds!

Our second raised bed has been placed on the lawn and is waiting to be filled.  I was going to have a raised bed at the front and one at the back of the lawn, but it just didn't feel right.  About a week ago I had a total rethink of how I want to design the garden, drew a new plan and now I'm super excited to get going.  The whole back half of the garden is going to be fruit trees and bushes and shrubs, and the front half will be the raised veg beds and mostly cottage garden style planting with fruit and veg interspersed through.  When we can afford to do the hard landscaping I want to curve the path to the right, where we'll have a studio shed, and plant a tree in the middle of the end of the garden so there's a nice central focal point. 

Anyway, Joe's put the new raised bed in the lawn, and dug a little trench for it so it sits level, as the lawn is really slope-y and bumpy.

As you can see the other raised bed is doing so good!  I've only fertilised it once too and I'm only watering using the ollas and a couple of wine bottle waterers.  I slightly regret planting two courgettes in there because they've got huge, but at least I think I'll have some courgettes this year!

I've never grown borlotti beans before, aren't they beautiful?

I'm growing rat's tail radish this year too and it's a lot bigger and taller than I expected.  It has lots of flowers, and I'm waiting for them to form seed pods, which are the edible part.

In the front garden the raised beds are doing good, but I'm not planting anything new in them because we're going to change up the front garden too. 

We going to change the gravel, put in new round raised beds and a half barrow pond, a wheely bin store with a green roof and these wooden raised beds will move to the other side of the front garden. 

I bought some exciting new plants this month, there are lots of gaps to fill after slugs ate all my summer seedlings!

Other nice plants in the garden this month, this huge fern, pretty calendula, self seeded hypericum, lavender with very yellow nasturtiums behind and lovely sage with slightly pink tips.

How's your garden this month? 

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *