Joe Blogs » Gardening

Garden Update

maedhros — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:32:20 +0000

Another week away has seen the courgettes go mad. We took a few with us on holiday, when there were just a few. Now there are a few showing signs of gigantism and lots of little ones on their way. The carrots are finally starting to develop into things that look (and taste) like carrots.

We’ve had a few baby carrots and several courgettes in stir-fries already. The onions are very slowly developing and the pumpkins are have 4 or 5 “fruits” (?) developing ranging from a couple of inches in diameter to small swellings below a flower. The butternut squash isn’t doing much beyond flowering yet, and the spinach beet has become a hedge. I don’t really know what to do with it now it’s so big. Paula suggested cooking some and freezing it like ice cubes to use in cooking later. Might be a solution.

Photos follow:

Therapy

maedhros — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:03:08 +0000

A week away from home does wonders for the veggies. At least, it does when you have a week of a mix of rain and sunshine and somebody popping in to water things when there’s no rain. Of course, the weeds had the same benefits so this morning I mowed the lawn and did some weeding, but the vegetable patch is actually looking like a vegetable patch now. The courgettes and squash have multiplied and the onions are sprouting nicely.

The whole experience of being in the garden, tending to my veg and the lawn (if you can call it that) in the sunshine was extremely therapeutic. The buddleia that I massacred in the spring has come back with a vengeance and it now towers over me. This is despite the fact that I cut it down to the ground with a saw when it was in the middle of a growth spurt. Of course, I did it without consultation and then found that Hannah liked the shade it offered. It was also living up to its nickname (the Butterfly Bush) as it was swarming with small tortoiseshell butterflies.

Some photos:

Small Tortoiseshell

More little green things

maedhros — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:08:50 +0000

Very exciting. The mixed leaf salad seedlings are now big enough to see from a distance ;-) and the carrots are showing their faces, as are the spinach beet. I checked the courgettes last night and found a little clod of earth lifting up so I removed it to find a little shoot trying to push it over. Today it’s got leaves!

The pumpkins aren’t showing any signs of life yet, and the squash isn’t looking too happy. I think the heavyish rain has actually splashed it with mud. Oh well. The orangey-pink thing is half a grapefruit skin as an attempt to catch a few of the gazillion snails that infest our garden. If that doesn’t get them, the liberal sprinkling of slug pellets might. smirk. Nassty snaileses, we hates ‘em. (Oscar likes them, though. “what a friendly little snail!”)

Courgette

muddy courgette

Mixed leaf

Veggies

maedhros — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:30:27 +0000

Ever since I started trying to get our garden into shape, I’ve been planning to have a small veggie patch. I dismantled the rotting shed earlier this year and then some more time passed and I started to build a raised bed. Some more time passed and I laid a small paving area for a table, a couple of chairs and Oscar’s sand pit. (Note the recurrent use of the word small). In doing so, I had to move quite a lot of topsoil to make it level and it filled the raised bed.

More time has passed, and periodically Hannah has asked me if I “actually plan on doing anything with that”; suggesting that it would look lovely with some nice heathers.

I was eventually spurred into action and bought a few packets of seeds from the co-op and pretty much just shoved them in the ground. I planted a couple of courgettes, a row of carrots, a row of mixed leaf salad, and some “spinach beet”. We picked up a couple of free packets of seeds from Charlecote Park the other day, so Oscar and I planted three of the seeds. Paula (Hannah’s mum) gave me a butternut squash plant to shove in, and has also given me some of her onion sets, which still need to go in.

Today was the day I spotted my first few tiny seedlings poking their heads through the soil. It feels nice :-)

Raised bed

Little Tiny Seedlings!