Solar lights

Over the last few weeks i've been buying solar powered lights for the garden, especially the herb garden. The only reason was so when i looked out of my window at night i might see something and not endless blackness. I'm quite enjoying how the lights slightly illuminate the herbs, when they have grown more in a couple of months it might be quite a nice effect. As for the herbs they seem to have survived the winter well, the mint is growing like crazy in new plants right across the vegetable plot.

A new generation

The great thing about spider plants is that they reproduce by growing plantlets on the end of a long stem so if you get one plant then you can (unless it dies of course) have generations of new plants every year to spread around the house. My Nan had spider plants for over 30 years all from one original plant. As for me well i can claim a mere 10 years or so with various generations of spider plants from a couple of plantlets i took from the plant in my boss' (at the time) office.

Once i had over a dozen plants but that dropped to 2 over time, but now i have taken 4 of the plantlets for a new generation. I don't think the 2 "parents" are my original spider plants, to be honest i should have kept track which were the originals! But never mind the spider plants live on for a new generation!

The herb garden

Last week's herbs plus some more i bought today and some lavender have been put into my raised bed, lets hope my herb garden will be a success this year! I just need to stop being lazy during the Summer and keep on top of the weeds and grasses.

Lets go herbs

After a few years of sowing vegetable seeds (and getting little in return, last year's pea harvest was about the same as one tin of peas from the supermarket!) I've decided to try something different this year in the garden and my raised bed.

I'm going to try and develop a herb garden, to start things off i've bought parsley, oregano and sage plants and will add more later on.

Pea harvest

Any thoughts that growing my own veg could be an alternative to food shopping or secure me in the event of an apocalypse really went years ago, this year's pea harvest is especially poor. Just enough for one side dish. Still there are always the sweet peppers which are growing well, though have yet to yield any fruit.

See the flowers

Vegetable growing has been scaled back this year to some pea plants in the garden (and not many of those though one seems strong) and some sweet peppers sown in a pot which is in my porch (it is East facing and makes a perfect mini-greenhouse). Both are flowering in fact and below you can see the sweet pepper flowers. A couple of years ago i had some great success with an indoor growing chilli plant which yielded some chillies for 2 seasons. Hopefully this one will be the same.

Pea survival

A couple of weeks ago i transplanted my first batch of pea plants from the nursery tub to the dangers of the open air. And dangers is the word as vicious slugs decimated the peas wiping out nearly all of them in double quick time! Three have survived at least and 2 are reasonably strong so hopefully they can thrive over the next few months. I do have a second batch of peas growing indoors though just in case!

Peas in

While the peas i sowed directly into the ground in the veg plot didn't come up the ones i put in an indoors nursery tub did come up a treat and were now big enough to transplant into the veg plot. This is always a risky business putting the young plants at the mercy of the outside world and its millions of slugs but they can't stay indoors forever.

I've sowed a second batch in the nursery tub as a back-up / second crop just in case. I really need a green house to be honest.

The porch does suffice to some extent, my peppers are starting to grow.

Gardening 2014

Off to a later than usual start but the 2014 gardening campaign is now on full swing, though more scaled back than last year. I'm only going to sow peas on the veg plot, which has been augmented with ashes from some old fences which were burned last week and some coffee grounds from Starbucks. I've sown some peas in a nursery trough but also in the veg plot itself. The only worry i have is that the pea seeds may be a bit old now but we'll see what (if anything) comes up...

Anything else vegetable related will be grown indoors, as this seems to be the only way to prevent slug attacks. I've put some chilli pepper seeds in a pot and that will be nice and warm in the porch. I've had good results with chillies before so hopefully these will grow nicely too.

2013 in review : Gardening

In theory i had a lot more free time this year so the garden must have looked wonderful? In truth i did do quite a bit in April and May including building a proper raised bed for the veg plot but once the masters got going properly and (probably more relevant) the Ashes began i spent less and less time in the garden.

Having said that i had a decent crop of peas and tomatoes (far too many of them to be honest). For a change i did manage to use some in cooking. I also planted some flowers which grew like crazy and took over half the garden.

So as usual the gardening season began with promise and ended in an overgrown mess. Roll on 2014 for more of the same most likely.

Lets make some relish

Tomatoes are the success story of this year's gardening season. Somehow, despite doing hardly any gardening for the last couple of months, i've got a bumper harvest though most are yet to ripen. Perhaps the tomatoes have done so well because i haven't been messing with them. Some of the ripe tomatoes are huge, my neighbour is really jealous to be honest.

One problem is i don't like raw tomatoes at all, so i have made my first ripe batch into some relish. I had to adapt a recipe i found online a bit as i didn't have all the ingredients but the result was pretty good even if i say so myself.

We have tomatoes

We have tomato fruits, to add to the other bounty of my veg plot this year. Actually i have only put out 9 tomato plants this year and 7 have survived (another one lives but it rather stunted). A number of my tomato plants now have fruit.

A garden in bloom

My nasturums (or whatever they are called) are finally starting to bloom! The flowers have grown astonishingly well from seed though i was wondering if these wannabe-triffids were actually going to flower. In a day or two i could have a real riot of colour. As i haven't mowed the lawn for a few weeks (to try and get some new grass seed to germinate) i also have plenty of wild flowers on the lawn...

The bounty of nature

Now i am quite impressed with these. I just harvested 3 radishes and they are the biggest i've ever pulled out of the garden! Especially the white one, its huge! Several times bigger than ones i've pulled up in the past. My tomato plants in the porch also doubled in size over the weekend while i was in London, and we're talking 20-30cm growth here which is pretty impressive.

Roses are red...

Actually probably more pinky-red, the best ones are yellow. A few roses from my garden. I can't claim any credit for the rose bushes which predate me at the house but i guess i can claim credit for not killing them off. In other garden news i have spotted my first pea flower and have sown some herb seeds to create a little indoor herb garden.

Feeding the birds

I put up a bird feeder a couple of weeks ago though i did not expect much because of past miserable failures. However i noticed this week the seed in the feeder was definitely going down! Yesterday i saw for the first time a couple of finches tucking in. They come quite often, hopefully the cats won't get them!

Garden progress report

Into June, the Summer proper. The garden should be blooming then eh? Well not quite but things are progressing nicely in some areas. My peas seem to be doing well, one has tripled in size since being transplanted outside a couple of weeks ago already! My nasturtiums (if that is the correct name, the spelling seems to vary a lot) are also doing well. I have them growing in all of my chimney pots and also have a "crop" (if you can refer to flowers like that) in the raised bed.

Radishes are also doing well, in fact i ate my first one grown in the garden yesterday. It was only a small radish but chopped up mixed well with some coleslaw. To try and encourage more birds into the garden i have just put up a bird seed thing. My plan is that seed eating birds may also attract insect eaters too and they can hoover up all the slugs!

Out into the big bad world

The major success of the 2013 growing season so far are my peas which have progressed brilliantly in their nursery trough. Its finally time to transplant them into the garden, unfortunately just as the weather has changed for the worse, snow even fell yesterday in some parts of the Midlands! Hopefully it will warm up again soon. Also hopefully my pea plot will prove fertile, though i worry there is too much grass under the soil, ash and compost layer. Time will tell of course, hopefully in a couple of months i will have some home grown peas to go with my chips...

Broken crockery

While digging a hole in the garden earlier today (to fill another hole with soil... which is where the soil for my raised bed came from - there is a method to this madness) i found a few pieces of broken crockery. Its funny how you always find these little bits of broken cups and plates if you dig deep enough. I wondered why this was so.

Did people in the past often drop cups and plates in their gardens and then leave the shards in the garden? I'm not the only person to ponder this, and their thought that maybe these shards were put in the bottom of pots and over time ended up in the soil seems feasible. Anyway the pea plot is now more or less ready, the cane frame went up today and soon i shall translate the pea plants in my nursery to the big bad world outside.

As well as these pieces of crockery i also found a large rusty metal bolt. Maybe it fell off a Spitfire... well as i live opposite the Castle Bromwich Jaguar factory which in the war made Spitfires perhaps that isn't quite as far fetched as it might seem. Probably more likely off an old lawn mower or something though!

A visitor

It is a nice day here today so i am doing some gardening. As i was doing so one of the neighbours' cats decided to pay me a visit. Unfortunately she was unable to help with any weeding.