Smartening up the Snicket!

The Easter Holidays were upon us and Charlie and I were keen to get started with our new raised beds! We had one fair day to get some tidying done, then it started raining, and continued raining solidly for 4 days. We British are not to be outdone by rain though, we drank tea, waited patiently and ran out whenever it stopped and the raised beds slowly got done, by the end of the holidays they were finished!

Despite the rain, the temperature in the greenhouse had warmed up sufficiently to get some seeds started. I sowed Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Chillies, Sweet Peppers, Cucumbers and Zucchini, starting then off in the house in the indoor propagater and moving them to the greenhouse when they were established. Sweet Peas, Cosmos and French Marigolds were sowed straight into the greenhouse.

 In the meantime, the second thing on my plan is to smarten up the little snicket at the side of the house. Now, historically, this snicket has been the place where everyone dumps their unwanted crap, and there it stays  awaiting the rubbish fairy to get round to going to the tip. I want to give it a makeover so it’s too pretty to dump stuff in. Job 1 was to clear the passage out.  While I was moving everything  I spotted my redundant Wormery which has been empty for a few years and decided to restart it. There’s a little alcove which is real crap magnet so after all the rubbish was cleared from it (3 trips to the tip later) we hung some trellis in the wall and I finished it with some colourful planters.

This alcove is not visible until you walk past it so it’s a nice little surprise on the way to the garden. However, the rest of the snicket is an alleyway that is visable from the kitchen.  I want to make a pretty view and reflect a bit of light into the house so the next part of the plan is to  paint the wall of the long alley white. I found some great mosaics on Etsy by Jojosara that I thought would look beautiful on that wall so I bought them and Charlie’s going to make some planters on legs to run along that wall. I did a mock up on my computer...

 We have to wait until the summer to paint the wall but hopefully this will  really brightened up the snicket and  it will remain a crap free zone. Still, a good start has been made!

Back to the drawing board

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Life at Minion HQ is good. Minion 1 is now a qualified Doctor, Minion 2 is 6ft and hairy, and Minion 3 has flown the nest and is at University studying Computer Science -so still doesn’t go outside much-. Minions 4, 5 and 6 are 17, 10 and 6. How times flies! 

The garden has taken a bit of a back seat to work and home improvement, but I feel it’s now time to get back on track. Ive always loved gardening, but after the first few years, Charlie’s interest has waned a little and he has been putting his time and energy into his other hobbies. So, the garden has been more and more neglected as I have struggled a bit to maintain our huge raised beds. This year, as the garden will be mainly my domain, with Minion support of course, it needs to be more user friendly.

 Now, raised beds are still the way to go as we have clay soil and live in a country where is rains pretty much all year round, but I do need to be able to dig and weed them comfortably so they need to be less wide. I would also like slabs inbetween the beds to make them more accessible in poor weather, which means a lot of work that is not particularly part of my skill set. Luckily, Charlie has a saying ‘Happy wife, happy life’ so he has agreed to completely rebuild the raised beds for me. That way, I will be free to get back to growing and he will be free to indulge in his leisure pursuits unhindered. So, I got my tape measure out and measured up the garden so I could make a scale drawing of it with my new raised beds. 

As I started planning though, there was one glaring issue. Sadly, try as we might, our fox issue has persisted and we have lost three pairs of chickens. Now we have lost the heart to get more chickens and that means chicken run is unoccupied and therefore, wasted space. The first thing I thought would be a good use of that space was a potting shed as the greenhouse fills up too quickly to work in once the growing season takes off. I also thought that I'd like a couple of dwarf apple trees in the space to replace the one we lost. So, I planned out a -very small - woodland garden at the back. 

So there's lots to do this year. It’s all very exciting, but I still have a little more time to put my feet up with a cup of tea, and dream of all the growing fun I’ll have this year.

The Darling Chillis..

May has passed in the minion garden, and it has to be said…we are on fire this year! This is, without a doubt the most 'on it' we have ever been. The potatoes are flourishing…the runner beans are running up the poles, everything in the garden is relatively weed free and happy. This is partly due to our lovely greenhouse which has given us the ability to start everything off in style; partly due to the fact we didn't let things go so far to pot in the winter; but mostly to do with the fact that Minion 6 is no longer sucking the life from us by waking us up in the early hours of the morning. It's amazing what you can do on a good night's sleep.

My herb project is coming along. The camomile has been disappointing. I tried to grow it from seed sown direct and a neighbourhood cat dug it all up to do his business (the filthy swine, it's at time like these you wish you had Minion 1 and his badminton racket again). Also, I've had more trouble that I expected cultivating Borage, but my 4th attempt has proven to be the charm and we have plants well on the way. I ended up with loads of Mallow plants and will have to foster some out as I have far more than I need. Similarly, the wormwood is proving a reliable grower. However, despite my successes….I have found my attempts at herb cultivation somewhat thwarted by my dear husband's unashamed hogging of the greenhouse….

Charlie has: 31 chilli plants, 12 pots of various culinary herbs, 12 tomato plants, 6 cucumbers and a tray of lettuces. Me?!? I've got one seed tray and 3 small pots…on the floor…in the corner:

See the little square foot of space under the staging on the RH side….that's mine!

I suppose I should be grateful I have any space at all. Charlie's getting very 'old man in his shed' about the greenhouse. He disappears out there at night grumbling darkly about greenfly. He berates me if I try to water anything (apparently he has 'a system')…in fact, I suspect he may soon change the locks. *Left the hallowed chilli plants enjoying all the sun :-)

In order to escape the muttering...I've been containing most of my efforts to the outside. I've planted lemon verbena, lady's mantle and some of my marrow in my herb bed. The pot marigold are everywhere and I've even managed to sneak a few flowers in here and there. The minions have been helping. Minion 6 loves watering and filling pots with compost. She may yet prove to be just as useful as Minion 5.

Minions 5 and 6 help sow the borage.

We are hoping for our luck to hold and for the bounty to be good this year. All I hope is that Charlie gets some bloody chillis…I'll never hear the end of it if he doesn't.

May 2014

A Man Possessed...

Just to remind you, last year, thanks to the torrential rain and very cold Spring and also somewhat due to us having a small and feisty 1 year old….the garden was in a bit of a sorry state:

March 2013

This year however we have kept on top of the Winter jobs, and at the beginning of March the garden looked like this:

March 2014.  Not a bad starting place at all!

Of course this has been aided by a really mild winter and a truly beautiful start to Spring. The game has also been changed by our lovely greenhouse, which has given us the opportunity to give the hardier seedings an early start. 

That said, the greenhouse is not currently heated so a lot of the seeds are still started off in the house on our windowsill propagators. Charlie has had great fun planting seeds, if fact he could be accused of having got a little carried away. Poor Minion 2 has had his windowsill conscripted and at one point I even discovered chilli seeds in my airing cupboard (I have to admit to having a slight hissy-fit over this and they were quickly evicted….well….there was nowhere to keep the towels!!). 

Lots more has happened this month…in fact Charlie has been like a man possessed… see if you can spot what he's been up to…

The most notable difference is the missing apple tree (Charlie's idea, he said it was because it was old, knarled and didn't produce very nice apples, but between you and me, I suspect it was just an excuse for him to use his new chain saw  * ) . A sad loss, but I have to admit we have a much better view of the greenhouse. We are going to plant another apple tree in the chicken enclosure to replace it. Charlie also built a cloche for the peas and squeezed in an extra raised bed. He's very handy! All-in-all a good start to the year and we're looking forward to, what will hopefully be, a great season.



*Charlie has a, some would say, slightly worrying penchant for things that cut, chop and saw. If I ever go missing…just bear this in mind.

Healing with Herbs

As I previously mentioned, this year we're going to have a bash at growing some medicinal herbs. We already have some herbs in the garden. Charlie is a fantastic cook and couldn't do without his bay (we have a standard bay in a large pot that lives on the patio) and rosemary. We have a nice clump of lemon balm which is one of my favourites; a tisane made out of 5 fresh lemon balm leaves and boiled water which has been allowed to cool a little will settle the most jittery nerves. And we have some sage and thyme…pretty standard offerings….This year however, we are going to expand our herb growing efforts by two more bed with a focus on making our own herbal remedies.

I have a book on herbs which I love. It's by a lady called Jekka McVicar and it really is the herb bible. Mine is a few years old and there is a newer book on sale on Amazon. You can still get hold of the version I have though. It looks like this:

She has a great website too. Well worth a peruse if you're interested in this particular topic:

http://www.jekkasherbfarm.com/shop

Ok. We've learnt our lessons over the years and there's no point in growing something we're not going to use so we looked first at the pages that describe the lotions and potions you can make using particular herbs and decided what would be useful for our family:

Chamomile (Chamaemelum Nobile)

I love chamomile tea but a cream of camomile can also be used to treat eczema  (Minions 5 and 6 are sufferers).

Marigold (Calendula Officinalis)

Makes a lovely cream for minor wounds (we get a lot of those), skin rashes (ditto) and sun burn (we are, after all, a bunch of pasty-faced Brits that burn easy).

Comfrey, Knitbone (Symphytum Officinale)

An ointment made of Comfrey stimulates growth of new cells and is used for healing external wounds. The leaves can also be made into a liquid feed or put on the compost heap to aid decomposition.

I also fancy having a go at a toning face pack made of dried lady's mantle, spearmint and mallow leaves that sounds heavenly.

And we're going to grow some borage which is so pretty and the flowers can be put in salads and frozen into ice-cubes for summer drinks; elderflower so we can make cordial and some wormwood which is apparently a good deterrent to keep lice out of the chicken house. 

 Here's the plan:

You might notice we're being far less ambitious with the other beds. The plan with the beds is to just grow a lot of a few things we like to eat and focus on the herbs and the greenhouse goodies this year.

So now we're going to get busy searching for and purchasing seeds and young plants so we're ready to hit the ground running in Spring. If you think we've missed a great herb off our list or have any other suggestions please let us know. 

New Year's Revelations

It's been AGES since I last had time to blog. To tell the honest truth we've been cheating on the garden with home improvements and have been up to our eyeballs in plaster, paint and self-assembly furniture (an evil invention which can incite the most placid of people to  extreme profanity and violence against inanimate objects). We have lived through it though and it's time to turn attention back to our lovely garden. 

To make up for the lack of blogging I thought it would be best to sum up the last 5 blog free months and then have a quick look forward to 2014 and all the trials and tribulations it will undoubtably bring us. 

Last I blogged, our fabulous greenhouse had been erected and even though it was really late in the season and July is, as you probably know, NOT the ideal time to be starting your greenhouse planting, we stormed ahead and filled it with some veg plants. These plants had been duly purchased from the local garden centres 'end of stock' lines and a bedraggled bunch they were. It was a long shot, but, you know, we didn't do half bad and it certainly gave us a taster of greenhouse gardening which is something that Charlie and I are both completely new to.

We planted some sweet pepper plants, cucumbers, tomatoes and lots of herbs. Alas, it proved too late for the tomatoes and even though the plants grew high, the fruits never really ripened. The cucumbers on the other hand were a great success and we were scoffing those into September. We also got a few lovely peppers and Charlie's favourite 'finissimo' basil (another great find from the Real Seed Company) LOVED the greenhouse and went mad on the top shelf. 

Some green in our house

Not bad for 'end of line' peppers!

The season ended all too quickly though and by October everything had to be cleared out and the greenhouse was cleaned. A very eager minion 5 was employed to help with the dirty work and now our lovely house is ready to go next season. We can't wait! 

Pots clean and ready for next year's bounty.

Minion labour!!

Elsewhere in the garden we had our usual list of successes and disasters. A really hot and lovely summer meant that we had to keep on top of the watering. Minion's were employed but often watered each other more than the plants….

Sadly, we weren't as hot on spotting pests and lost our entire pea crop to pea moths :-(. We did however have a lovely crop of chard…..only trouble was, none of it got eaten as we discovered we actually weren't that keen on chard. The maris piper potatoes were fantastic though. We were cropping them for a good couple of months. They were bright pink straight out of the ground and tasted delicious. More will be planted next year. We tried some bread poppies which produced absolutely beautiful flowers  heads and loads of seeds. 

The bread poppies were a real find.

lost peas :-(

The patio was looking pretty too and, in addition to my lovely alpines, I managed to sneak in a few pots  and ornaments to pretty things up. 

Roses and lavender, my favourites.

The only snail that could be spotted in our garden this year thanks to our nemaslug success!!!

In the end 2013 wasn't half bad. We've learnt more lessons, such as: don't plant things you don't eat; keep a keen eye out for pests and buy lots of nemaslug because it's bloody brilliant….and we feel ready to tackle 2014! Happy New Year everyone.

Coming soon……

The Plan 2014

Healing with Herbs (my big project for next season)

Minions on Manoeuvre

Going Undercover: Part 2

On the morning of the Summer Soltice two burly but very pleasent men, Jimmy and Brian,  arrived from Swallow Greenhouses with a truck containing our beautiful new greenhouse. I had to go to work so sadly I missed the erecting but my long-suffering husband Charlie was left with strict instructions to document the event. The greenhouse arrived in preglazed panels and Charlie said they wasted no time at all in getting it up. In fact it was done and dusted in less than two hours...Impressive!

The walls went up in minutes but he roof was a bit more technical as they had to install the automatic venting windows. They have a mechanism filled with a wax substance. When the temperature goes up the substance expands and opens the vents and at night when it cools the substance contracts to shut the windows. Very clever!

The last thing to go in was the staging. Charlie and I decided to have the permanent staging on the right hand side so we can look out on the garden while working. Very handy to keep an eye on the younger minions but also give you a great view of the garden.

In no time at all it was finished and I think you'll agree it was well worth all the hard work (well poor Chris might not agree after we subjected her to two days of patio laying back breaking torture:-)  Here is the finished product:

We paid extra to have a nice guttering system installed and for a high shelf on the right hand side. I'll leave you with the view we will have from inside our greenhouse...well worth the wait. Happy Days!