Stumbling Through The Garden

The rain has stayed away but the grass is wet which puts my plans of cutting the grass on hold until later in the afternoon so, I used the time to tend to the vegetables.

I started out by continuing the weeding which didn’t take as long as I thought and the proceeded to water everything in the greenhouse. It’s astonishing how much water tomato plants take. With the dull work out of the way I went harvesting for things to make into a soup. I’m going to have a go at making a vegetable soup as it’ll keep everything nice and simple. With Sprocket’s help I grabbed some Onions, Turnips and Parsnips. The parsnips are a little small but I wanted to check how well they are coming along.

Sprocket inspects the harvest.

Jo is going to pickle some beetroot so I grabbed the larger ones. These are Detroit Globes I think.

Some of the Super Marmande Toms have ripened and for the last few days I’ve been using them along side some of the homegrown Iceberg Lettuce in sandwiches.

I’m going to have to rethink my labelling procedure for next year as almost all of the markers are now blank. I can tell onions from leeks etc but I can’t tell one onion from another.

Not too much to report from the garden but we’ve been able to start using some of the produce. So far we’ve had some of the onions, tomatoes, potatoes and lettuce.

From what I can gather the Garlic is ready to be pulled. The stems are turning brown and the leaves falling over. I’ll try and grab one tonight as a test and dry it. I don’t actually know what I’m going to do with all the Garlic bulbs.

The Turnips that went in are huge, I got a shock when I peered beneath their leaves and saw them. Currently looking at all the soup recipes to see what we can make. It would have been nice if the carrots and parsnips had grown as quick but I’ll know for next year. Maybe I’ll put in another sowing for later in the year?

The carrots are growing well but still not ready for eating, both the purple and yellow ones will make for interesting salads.

I decided to grow some Carrots, Silverskin Onions and Beetroots in large tree buckets and it’s been working really well. So much easier to weed and maintain the watering. Next year I’m going to grow a lot more containers.

Meanwhile, in the greenhouse baby toms appear to be growing well. The other varieties, are a lot slower to ripen but they’ll get there. My lesson from this year is that I don’t need to many plants next year. A couple of each variety will be fine

I’m hoping the waether improves so I can get out to the garden this weekend.

….. of the dog and the Sandwiches.

So the parents arrived on thursday for a day in the garden as they thought it best to start the “to do” list I’ve been saving for them The weather stayed hot and sunny for the whole of the day which was nice as it made my supervising easier. Nothing annoys me more than giving commands and instructions on a dull cold day.

Very kindly they had brought some lunch with them. This consisted of sandwiches, crisps and a few pork pies. Having admired the progress my dad had made with the wall we wandered to the garden with the dogs to show my mum the new additions my dad had created on previous visits.

These jumps were made for jumping

Sprocket loves jumping these, Marley however being the daft clown likes to run into them. It does leave and amusing nose print

Sprocket the wonder horse

When tired Marley wanders off back to the house as per normal leaving us being chased by flies and watching sprocket try to eat them. After a minute or so Sprocket finds us a little boring and trots off towards the watering hole for refreshment.

We slowly walk back discussing how well behaved the two dogs are and admire the raspberries that are demanding to be picked. It was as we turned the corner we noticed something was very wrong, Marley and Sprocket were sitting by the door looking content with a hint of scampish-ness, the bag of food was missing. As my eyes found the two perfectly opened but empty sandwich packets Marley stared at us and licked his doggy lips. It would be a meager lunch at Scroghill for us now.

My dad went back to work finishing off the wall next to the house by putting a flat top on it so we can use it as a seat. The slabs we used he managed to source for free! We’ll finish it by painting the top black and the wall part white but will look at rendering it to make it smoother.

Looks very good to me.

The new wall seat. The thing in the middle is an old Cheese Press.

With my dad mixing cement for the wall and using the grinder to wake the dead, I mean straighten the slabs, my mum wandered over to the veg patch to do a little “light” weeding. After 6 hours she’d finished

Looks a little sparse now

Looks like we have a good crop of Beetroot, Parnsip, Kohl Rabi, Swede and Onion. The carrots are coming along well but some of the onions haven’t done so well. My fault as I let the weeds get the better of them. They were the silverskins and Bloodreds.
In exchange for some of our eggs my parents were able to get me some very large containers, they are the type a tree would be delivered in. In them I have planted some Butternut Squash, Silverskin Onions, Bloodred Onions and Solar Yellow carrots. The remainder of the Peas I’ve planted into tyres next to the Rhubarb.
In the newly weed free areas i’ve managed to plant out the last 12 of the sweetcorn plants. They are the Lark variety.

As I was running out of space at a fantastic rate (I may have mentioned this before) my Dad and I assembled the second greenhouse and situated it in front of the outside tap, next to the other greenhouse, directly across from the Sunflowers (which are now the same height as Jo).

Due to man-handling some of the glass panes needed replaced. About 15 in all

Having stopped crying when I saw the price of replacement glass I opted for a Polycarbonate option and I found it here, (highly recommended by the way, the delivery speed was astounding). With the greenhouse windproof-ish I’ve been able to create more space for everything.

Filling up

The new greenhouse is home to Tomatoes, Chillies and Cucumbers.
Note, my patented window holding open device. (It’s not really patented so you can use a tomato feed bottle as a window opener if you like)

The old one is still pretty packed but the plants now have a little more room to spread out.

The tomatoes in the top left corner are ripe and are ready to be eaten. They are all Tumblers and taste awesome. It amazes me how much flavour homegrown toms have compared to supermarket bought.

I’ve found that using string to support the plants works a lot better than cane, I had to buy more of the greenhouse hook things and again, the price is enough to make one wince. from a large DIY store they wanted £5 for 10! a quick search on ebay and I got 50 for £3 delivered. Take that Highstreet shops!

Sunday started with Jo harvesting some raspberries in order to make Raspberry muffins and there was enough left over for me to make Jam.

I use the Waitrose recipe (here) which is so simple anyone can do it. With the Raspberries and sugar all measured out I set to work. I even remembered to wear an oven glove when removing the jars as they will be a bit hot. It was from there that things went a little wrong. I was struggling to get the jars the right was up with the cumbersome oven glove so the only logical thing to do was take it off. Glass can get very hot when it’s been baked. Lesson partly learned I righted the jar and proceeded to use my Jam funnel thing to drip jam all over the cooker top with some of it ending up in the jars.

Not wanting to wait I was in a rush to test the end result . It was while i was dipping my finger into the “warm” jam in the ladle that I realised that it wasn’t quite as cool as a baked Jam jar. Melted sugar and fruit can be awesomely hot.

The Jam does taste great but I over boiled this batch so it is tricky to spread on toast.

Jo’s muffins were good though.

As my new pots arrived from ebay I started potting up the tomatoes, chillies, Cucumbers and Melons into something a little bigger but it soon became clear that the free space had gone. Everything was so close together that it made watering a real pain.

After a quick phone call to my Delivery person and Head Estate Manager (Dad) he managed to get the second greenhouse (which he found for free) from my Granddad’s garage to my house. I won’t lie, it was interesting putting it together without instructions but we got there. It was a strange coincidence that every time we got to a tricky or complicated part I’d have to return to the office and check my work emails only to return to the problem resolved. Strange that.

The plan is to eventually move the old and new one (both 8ftx6ft) together but keep them as individuals so I can keep one warmer than the other or separate tomatoes and other veg. We’ll have to rip up the current base and lay new flag stones but there isn’t time at the moment so it’s been placed into a temporary position.

It appears that I have to find about 15 new glass panels to replace broken ones, that’ll be this weekends job but having had a look at the price of replacement glass I might try using cling film!

The area is a bit of a mess at the moment but I know where everything is!

Missing a few panes of glass but it'll do

If a red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house blue bricks, What's a Greenhouse made of?

When not assembling greenhouses my dad was tasked with adding some steps to “the slopey bit”, I went back to “work” and returned an hour or so later to find this….

Steps, they aid walking

Don’t worry, this post is almost finished…

Marley was exploring the bottom of the garden again and happened to stumble across (fell into) a pheasant nest. I’ve kept the dogs away from it for the best part of a week but it looks like it’s been abandoned

Pheasant Eggs

Jo found that some of the Raspberries were ripe yesterday and it looks like there will soon be enough to make jam providing we don’t munch them all while walking the dogs around the garden. They’ve gone from green to red pretty much overnight
This was the recipe I used last year for Jam and it worked perfectly.
http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/r/raspberry_jam.html

There are quite a few Raspberry bushes scattered around the garden all at different states of ripeness. Not sure if that’s due to the variety or location.

Raw jam growing on a bush.

Hidden in beside the Raspberries we found a stack of Blackcurrants. They’ve spread a lot since last year. I wonder if I can find a Ribena recipe…

Ribena in it's natural form.

Been a while since my last post and I feel like I’ve spent all my time weeding. Stupidly the way I planted the carrots and beetroots left no space to stand so weeding the centre bit is very tricky.  With yet more rain and it being quite warm the weeds are fairly growing.

The good news is that the carrots are also growing so it makes identifying them a lot easier. I’ll start thinning them out shortly.

Due to the vast number of tomato plants we’ve got I have depleted my supply of large pots so I ventured off to ebay this morning and ordered another 20. I’ve gone for two sizes, 10 litre and 15 litre so I can see which performs better.
Super Marmande, Gardener’s Delight and Tumbler seem to be fruiting with the others taking longer which will hopefully see us not have all the toms ripe at the same time.

I planted out 3 types of onion as seed directly to the veg patch a while ago, of these the Ailsa Craig and Blood Red ones are germinating but I’ve got nothing from the Arthurs. I’ll give them a week or two and then try another sowing.

The sweetcorn I planted to get the 3 Lark’s up to a more respectful number are almost ready to go out. I’ve been hardening them off and at the next dry spell they’ll get a new home. Of the 9 minipops  put out last month I’ve only lost one and the others seem to be growing well.

My Dad has been round again and we extended the hen run along 3/4′s of the steading wall which should keep the chooks happy. Broody hen appears to be back to normal which was handy as one the day she decided to break out of it we got a cage delivered for her to live in until she snapped out of it.

Extended run

The Beehive has been painted and placed out with lure in it to try and attract a wild swarm. Not much chance of that but it’s better than doing nothing. I’ve found someone who has agreed to get me some bees so whether that will be this year or next I’m not sure.
The hive has been put in  what will be turned into a “secret garden”. By that I mean it’ll be left to grow wild and be hidden from view.

Beehive

Random snap from the last few days.

Flower Bee

Some of the Tumblers, Super Marmandes and Gardener’s Delights have small toms on them! I thought it was too early but they seem to have their own timetable. Maybe they are fruiting too early but I’ll let them continue.  As we have a lot of Gardener’s Delight tomato plants and little space in the greenhouse I’m going to move at least 50% of them outside and see if they do well or not.  The other varieties of Tom I’ll keep inside.

We’ve moved two of the Gardener’s Delight’s onto the kitchen window sill along with some rocket (which Jo planted) and some lettuce. Once we find a couple more nicer looking pots well move some of the Chillies in too.

Spent hours weeding last night and beginning to make some progress, hopefully I’ll get out again tonight and get it finished for the time being.

The Pumpkins (Hundred weight) I planted out appear to have the beginnings of small Pumpkins on them although the first two that went out are looking a little ill. Wilted leaves and yellowing. I believe this is down to the cold nights.
I planted 3 more out but have covered two of them with a cloche to see if that helps.

I’m off again all next week so hopefully will get a lot done in the garden.

It’s been a while since my last update and many things have happened, the most exciting of which was me being stung on the forehead by a honey bee.  Anyway, No sooner had I put the Sunflowers into bigger pots and outside, we were hit by gale force winds. Due to laziness of my part I’d left the pots in the greenhouse so they didn’t get damaged. The greenhouse stayed in one piece this time but two trees in the garden we not so lucky. We’ve managed to try and stake them back up but only time will tell if they recover.

We lost huge branches of the larger trees but thankfully they didn’t hit anything or anyone.

In the greenhouse I managed to free up a lot of space by donating some tomato, peas and bean plants to my mum for her school fare. They might sell and raise sme money or they might not. Either way, I now have room!
Between rain showers tonight I managed to upgrade some tomato and Chilli plants to larger homes. The Ipomea, Cosmos, Holyhock, Dalhia and Cyrinthes have been put into larger pots and I think this weekend i’ll put them outside.

My dad has been round and built me some frames for the climbing veg/plants. The steading wall in the courtyard has 3 nice frames that will have some Ipomea and Sweet Peas climb them.  It will be arranged in an “Ipomea Sandwich” fashion.

Round by the greenhouse he has constructed a larger frame and attached it to the pig shed wall which is now home to Peas, Peas (Jaguar), Climbing French Beans and Sugar Snap Peas. It looks like there is somekind of Bee next in the pig shed wall and from what I can tell it’s the “Early Bumblebee”.

The extention to the Hen house run  extention is continuing with labour being provided soley by my Dad. I’m “too busy” with work to help

Weeding continues as ever and with all the rain and heat it will only help to help these little pests grow. I thought I’d lost the carrots but underneath the layer of weeds, rows of carrot seedlings have appeared.

It’s far too nice a day to be inside so I’m off to the garden….