Sun, Salad, Strimming and Such!

Hi!

The last few days have been very busy for us. Jon has mown and strimmed the lawn and its looking just fantastic. Even the patches at the far end of the garden where the bamboo was and the place where we used to have a fire are looking wonderful now; we are sooo enjoying the garden with this wonderful weather.

We sat and had lunch at the picnic table yesterday and the addition of the brolly was perfect; we are eating salad leaves and herbs at just about every meal just now which is very satisfying.

We purchased a new strimmer and Jon has been around  the main veg patch

and the fruit patch too. I've raked it and I've decided to put membrane down and Jon will get wood chippings to go on top and this will keep the weeds down. I so wanted it to be an au natural area but the weeds are no good when you want to look after the fruit trees and bushes properly so they've gotta go.

On Saturday afternoon, again flippin' hot, I put down membrane on the floor of the greenhouse. Sweat was dripping off the end of my nose! We shovelled sand onto it and laid it level; this will do for this year then we'll set it up right in time for next Spring probably with staging and raised beds.

I know it probably isn't the traditional floor of a greenhouse but it suits me.

Oh, on Friday and Saturday I received some parcels in the post. I've been filling in some online surveys (won't be doing it any more as I seemed to be getting lots of spam email) and decided to cash in my £15 Amazon reward voucher. I went for the Sarah Rainey 3-ingredient baking book - there are lots of things in it I am going to try -  along with Frances Tophill's First Time Gardener. The latter is a lovely book with different chapters of interest and not just about sowing and growing, which for me is a change. I also chose some cute macaron-design writing paper to use when writing to my pen pals.

On Saturday the things I ordered with my letter voucher from Grow Your Own Magazine courtesy of Thompson and Morgan came. 

I went for some spray weed killer - I know some people don't like to use it but I need this for some small areas around the sleepers of my veg beds. I also bought rubber tops for bamboos canes to prevent poking my eyes out,

and some fly papers to hang in both the greenhouse and poly house. I ordered my sweet potato slips which will be here by the end of the month and to plant these in I bought four growing bags. Finally I treated myself to a fantastic Kent and Stowe trowel which is pure quality and just feels lovely in your hand, very posh I am with this and my RHS gloves!

On Friday I tied the front door rose back a bit and its in flower and already looking lovely.

Yesterday afternoon I took up a few spuds because one came up by accident when I was earthing up so wanted to check progress. I brought these in...

I'm now in a slight state of anxiety as when I took up the spuds on a couple of the plants there were a couple which were mushy. All the leaves are fine, no blackening and looking extremely healthy so fingers crossed that the rest will be ok, even though there are so yellow bolting-like looking flowers.... Hope my spud campaign hasn't finished before its started.

Here are the Robin chicks; they are growing and often seen with their little mouths open wide ready for food.

The sunflowers,

supermarket-bought lettuces potted on and

 

broccoli seedlings are all doing well. I plan on putting the latter in the spot where I'll be taking up the first early spuds.

Well I think that's my update done; the weather is forecast to be the same as recently until Thursday when we hope to get just a little bit of rain.

Hope everybody else is enjoying their gardens.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Garden Bits and Bobs.

Good morning.

Last evening I stood in the Poly House and thought to myself "I am soooo content right now." I was so happy to be there doing what I was doing. This was me, crocks, socks and shorts - not the best look!

The recent much needed rain has really brought things on in the sowing and growing department and I'm loving it. After the slow start to Spring we really seem to be catching up, apart from my tomatoes which are quite a bit behind last year but we're getting there. I have begun potting them on and have put some of the Sweet Aperitif variety in their last growing place with stakes ready for when they hopefully shoot up!

In the fruit patch, still slightly overgrown but getting to that! I'm really confident of a good harvest of soft fruit this year from the blackcurrants and blueberries as you can see here. No point showing the raspberry bushes as they are beasts!

As you may have seen in my last post I have cancelled one of my Twitter accounts. Before I did this I was really lucky to win a pair of gorgeous gardening gloves in a competition run between the RHS and a company called Gold Leaf gloves. Look!

When coming in the cellar back door the other day I saw this! A nest in the corner of one of the nooks. There are four eggs being looked after by a Robin; she happily sits on them even though I go in and out of the door quite frequently it doesn't seem to bother her at all.

I have picked some of the wild garlic, including flowers, and put it in stir fries and on salads; its been yummy.

I am doing my best to get the pesto made very soon as it is already dying back and I don't want to lose all of it. I really hope to be harvesting the first of our salad leaves very soon; as you can see they are looking great.

This is a mixed living lettuce I bought last week; I've planted them out before and they've grown really well so I thought I'd add this into the mix!

I was earthing up the Arran Pilot first early spuds the other day and look what I accidentally brought up! They will be properly ready for harvest quite soon so look forward to crossing that item off my shopping list along with salad leaves.

I'm chuffed to bits with how the main patch is coming on. The sweet peas on the end of the frame are coming on a pace, as are the climbing peas...

and spuds are looking great (see further down the post), I have red and green lettuce in there, too, and the spinach beet is peeking through although I'm not quite sure what it'll look like when ready to harvest!

 The dwarf beans seem to be catching up with the season....

as does the kale, beetroot and turnips in the small bed.

Jon tasted one of the first strawberries yesterday and I'm hopeful for a small but good crop on the two plants.

Right, that is my catch up for now. Visitors coming today and a few jobs to get done. Watered outside, chooks fed and washer on already so just to have breakfast now and crack on.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Warming Weather And More To Come?...

Hi!

The weather is definitely improving. (Hope my sunflowers grow this well!)

Even though in Wales we're still getting rain showers, of course, the mercury is still rising. 

No more so than in the conservatory which, you probably know, is standing in as my Poly House until such time as the storm damage to the latter is mended.

Outside I can see the tops of the first early spuds from the Poly House, such is the rate of growth just now. 

On the fruit patch the apple blossom and other fruit trees are flowering and the blackcurrant bushes and raspberry canes are coming on a pace, too. 

The rasps have re-seeded themselves in a couple of places, which I'm very pleased about, but I'll wait until they're a bit bigger then tidy them up with bamboo canes and string as I did with the biggest of them this morning. 

Ooh, today my neighbour who works at the local nursery brought me another rhubarb crown; I've planted this with the first one and I'm looking forward to having quite a sizeable patch eventually; just grateful that rhubarb is not too fussy where it grows as the area I've chosen is a bit stony but it doesn't seem to be bothering it.

The wild garlic is getting huge so I MUST do something with it very soon!

Today I've sown carrot seeds in the same bed as the parsnips and radishes. 

Whilst doing that I've, hopefully, sufficiently bunged up a hole where a mole or rabbit got through into the bed at the end of last year's growing season. Not that much damage was done then and hope to minimise it this year.

I also sowed some spinach beet, perpetual spinach, among the 2nd early spuds in the main patch; this is another of my efforts at a bit of mixed planting; it is described like this:

- A delicious spinach substitute but easier to grow. High yields of nutritious greens and resists bolting in Summer. 

I'm getting very excited about how things are coming on and feel really positive for the coming weeks and months. I'm sure the good weather forecast for the weekend will help towards us all catching up after a very poor start to Spring.

That's all for now with my ramblings.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Just Time For A Few Jobs.

It has been a busy weekend. Yesterday, as you may know I had a great time on my Poly Tunnel course, see previous post, but I did manage to get outside today, briefly.

Today, so that Jon could carry on with his jobs, I opted to take Alfie to his football tournament. Not my idea of a fun time to be honest but the mums of some of the boys are nice to talk to so we always have a chat. As it turned out his team didn't do that well so after setting off at 8.40am we were home by about 1.30pm, after a quick emergency stop at Screw Fix as Jon was slightly short on a piece of soil pipe!

After gathering myself and taking Jon, and a pal who'd dropped by, a brew I headed to the Poly House. It is a bit like sowing al fresco due to parts of the wall and roof missing but whatever....

I wanted to sow some more tomatoes as I'd bought a lovely looking variety called Golden Sunrise; I sowed two seeds in four pots. Then I thought I'd start my climbing peas off and instead of using the accepted drainpipe method, went rogue and it felt gooood, I just opted for putting two seeds in 12 pots. Finally I put compost in the drainpipe which is attached to the side of the Poly House and sowed some Rocket.

Now I did mention the other day that I was trying to think of how to make use of the top part of the old cold frame. Well, being inspired by Kim I placed one part on the staging and put the seeds on the base... 

then put the top on like the lid of a propagator; really hope it works, even if the Poly House is a little open to the elements as you can see in the photos!

I then borrowed our neighbours' strimmer for the fruit patch; it was a lot heavier than ours which needs a little attention, when Jon has time, but I did my best to get rid of a few weeds and grasses. Again I've been inspired by Kim to leave that end of the garden to go a little wild. Even though there is a veg patch there it will not be affected as long as I strim any weeds first then I think I''l put stones I've been collecting around the wooden edges as a barrier. (Just thought of that!)

Great to get outside and do stuff, even if just small jobs just now.

Ok I think that is it for me.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Bits and Bobs Into The Weekend.

Yesterday the May issue of Grow Your Own magazine arrived through my door. I am so pleased I decided to subscribe to it as it's helped me a great deal since my journey of sowing and growing began. I love that you get help, tips, advice, offers and free stuff, like peas and beans this month!

Now, a good while ago GYO were asking for readers to submit gardening tips so I duly sent in mine and look what happened!

It's me having one of my letters published, again, so I will be very happily receiving £40 worth of vouchers by the end of the month to spend with Thompson and Morgan. I am ridiculously excited and it couldn't be a better time to buy things for the garden; I think first on the list will be my sweet potato slips but not sure what else just yet. Wish I could get paid to write stuff, that would be just fab.

Another exciting thing happening is that tomorrow I am going on a one-day poly tunnel course. Now I know I don't have a poly tunnel but it will still be a beneficial experience. Even more fab is that it is one of the courses run by the lovely Kim Stoddart at Green Rocket Courses here in beautiful Ceredigion whom I wrote about recently. I shall be setting off bright and early whilst Jon takes care of the boys for the day. I already have parental guilt piling up as I always feel I am skiving off my family duties when I get to do something on my own, but I'm getting round to the idea,  butI am on duty for Alfie's football tournament on Sunday morning.

In other news, yesterday was absolutely glorious here so once the Airbnb guests had gone, washing up done, washing on the line and a quick tidy up I put the boys to work on the leftovers from a fire we had recently; it needed shoveling to fill in a gap where Jon had been doing some building near the tractor shed. 

I then got round to tidying out the shallow sink where I grow lettuce and spring onions, sowing Kale seeds in the old cold frame, Basil seeds for the kitchen window and coriander and flat leaf parsley in the herb loo and sink! I also took out some poorly performing onions from one of the tyres; it was a waste of space for so few and I'm going to possibly put Marketmore cucumbers in there instead - I've never grown them outside so we'll see how we get on.

I had a quick look at the fruit patch; bushes, canes and trees are mostly looking really healthy with lots of shoots so chuffed about that. 

Ok, I think I better get going as probably going food shopping in an hour or so and need to tidy up the breakfast things.

Hope everybody has a lovely weekend and can't wait to report back after my exciting day tomorrow.

Bye for now.

Lou.xx

Just A Great Day To Be Alive.

A great big sunny hi there and hello from SUPER sunny mid-Wales. What a day?! As I walked from having collected the eggs today I looked around the garden and thought just how lucky we are to be where we are and to be doing what we want to do.

Getting a post done whilst Jon is taking Harry to Sea Cadets, Alfie already at Youth Club. A catch up before the weekend. We currently have guests in the Airbnb room for two nights then we have Jon's mum and brother visiting on Sunday. Of course in the middle of this we have the usual activities like stage school and piano lesson; at least Chinese takeaway will take care of tea on Sunday!

Later on, when the guests who will be in our Airbnb room for the weekend said it must be like living your dream, I replied that it is. I also said we count our lucky stars everyday for what we do and and where we are when there are so many unfortunate happenings in the world right now. I'm going to say something a bit controversial; we are happy to be in our little bubble.

So today. I got a garden prep job done I have wanted to do for a while. At the front of the house behind the walls on each side of the door there were lots of weeds, roots etc which needed to come out before we it can be mulched with wood chippings.

Here is the before photo....

I am so chuffed with myself as it didn't take as long as I thought it would; the other side may get done tomorrow or Sunday morning.

I did a couple of other jobs; made a note of some seeds I want to sow, filled up my water bottles for the Poly House from the water butt and put some stones into the garden wall that had been dug up from various places.

Oh, the pizza oven is done!

We are hoping to use it tomorrow. Eeeek!

In the corner near the new veg patch I have dug over and hoed the little slope and scattered some mixed wildflower seeds; I look forward to those coming up, if they take it will make a lovely bright addition to that area.

Now, I might have been a bit previous but these are my early heritage variety Golden Acre cabbages. They have been out a couple of days, protected one night with fleece but all seems ok. They are fit for harvest from June to August.

In the Poly House my mixed salad leaves are really doing well.

The beetroot is looking strong so the three trays will be put out soon.

The spring onions inside are starting to look a little stronger; not sure if I need to put them outside yet but I'll wait until they get a bit bigger before I decide.

Oh, yesterday I got a couple of bargains from Morrisons; one Bramley apple tree and one Braeburn each for £5.

They are now in the fruit patch, thanks to Jon; he is also fetching from Morrisons this evening 6 bags of compost for me; 420 litres for £18.00; I think that's a good price.

Right well that is about it I think.

I do hope you all get some fantastic weather, get out in the garden, greenhouse or poly tunnel and I look forward to seeing what everybody gets up to over the weekend.

Bye for now.

Lou.x