Category Archives: Gardening

Last time I said I’d see you in Oct – only just made it! It’s been a funny month in the garden. Mild, with heaps of the wet stuff but not so much of the bright stuff. Crops are taking a long time to ripen and the veggie plot looks desperately untidy, spent, tired andContinue reading “Nearly didn’t make it!”

Garden life in photographs – chickens, squirrels, wasps, a rogue rat, flowers, harvest, preserves, frogs, kindling, children, dogs and foxes – it’s been busy in my little haven! Figs, plums, greengages, apples, hazelnuts, melons, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, courgettes, giant mushrooms, tomatoes, potatoes, salad leaves, spring onions, cucumbers, eggs, herbs, and a few late strawberries haveContinue reading “Summing up September – something different”

“My cucurbits aren’t producing fruit “, I hear you cry. I feel your pain, it’s happened to me. Cucumber, melon, courgette (marrow), squash, gourd and pumpkin, are all members of this delicious, watery, succulent family. Back in the Spring, you took those curiously flat, oval seeds and started them off in pots. You even plantedContinue reading “Congratulations – it’s a girl!”

That’s the often repeated mantra that echoes throughout my garden at the moment! The visiting blackbirds seem very tame; I can get ridiculously close to them. One clever couple have raised triplets and bring them to the redcurrant bush to feast on. I don’t mind; there are plenty. But when they move onto my blueberriesContinue reading ““Keep your bird lips off my food””

This time last year I woke up with an idea. Life had radically changed for all of us; around two months into the first long lockdown, unable to work and, for me an added threat of redundancy was looming. Now, I am a thinker but I’m also a doer. Sometimes I sits and thinks, sometimesContinue reading “What a difference a year makes.”

This time I won’t shout. Promise. My poor delicate seedlings don’t know whether to wear fur lined boots or open toed sandals. In the greenhouse they bask in 80 degrees centigrade during the day and shiver in minus 1 at night.  Such extreme fluctuations have led to a dozen of my tomato seedlings giving upContinue reading “Blog”

Yes, you!  You know who are. You’ve sowed those seeds and now you can’t help yourself. You peer into the propagator every few hours searching for just the tiniest sign of life. Is that your imagination or is there something breaking through the soil? You’re tempted to rummage around in the compost – just disturbContinue reading “Step AWAY from the Propagator!”

Or at least they should have! Potatoes are easy to grow, and every time you unearth one of these golden gems, you’re filled with motivation to dig for more. It’s addictive. They do equally as well in containers and raised beds as in the open ground and are fairly simple souls that don’t ask tooContinue reading “Blog – Your seed potatoes have got their eyes on you!”

Ah, January, the ‘month of the snows’ where only the hardiest of Perennials are thinking about going into the garden. However, the saying that you shouldn’t work the soil when it is waterlogged should be heeded. You will only compact it if you do, stamping out oxygen and life. There are some jobs you canContinue reading “Blog”

When should you water your garden? In the morning or the evening? There is absolutely no reason why you can’t do the watering in the evening – especially if that’s the best time for you to fit it in with all of life’s other commitments. It’s better to do it then than not at all.Continue reading “Molluscs party at night!”