Our garden Spring 2016

 Here are some shots of our garden and lots of goodies growing ready to feed our family, as you see we have a good onion bed and we love a pickled onion here so grew an entire bed of shallots.

 We also got an entire farmers trailer pulled by tractor pile of muck this year and I am so grateful for this gold for the garden, we even popped some pumpkins and cucumbers in there to grow and they seem to be super charged.

 Our layout has changed a lot since last year and we have had to do a lot more rabbit proofing and we have made more paths but we are now happy with our rotating grid system although the wild flower meadow was a flop this year as I think all the mice ate the many seeds we sowed.  however we seem to have good success in growing tall grasses, well there is always next year after doing a bit more research.

 We finally have 1 small greenhouse and it is already bursting at the windows with all sorts of plants growing on and we would very much like to have more glass houses bigger ones but they are hard to come by.

Above are two really pretty plants that grow in the garden and I have to keep weeding them out but what pretty weeds to have.  Below is a Hot lips salvia and an Allium, a local lady stopped at my fence to comment on what impressive tight balls I had, I was a bit confused until she pointed.

Sophie is a monkey as always refusing to get out of the sprinkler and you can blame her with all this hot weather.

jobs for the weekend week 1 of February

Jobs for the weekend, are starting to slowly ramp up in the garden, it really hasn't been cold at all this winter and we still have a tun of logs we didn't burn as its been that mild, and the mild weather is making things pop all over the garden, I had 5000 bulbs last autumn and I have felt like a squirrel constantly out digging and hiding them, and I was so glad to see so many lift their heads from the soil to greet spring.

 2 jobs that got underway was the cutting of a new boarder to mirror the boarder on the other side of the fence, I don't know if you can see the cut line but once Ali had cut it he remarked on its rather unfortunate shape.  That will have to be an in garden snigger between you and I.

While Ali was working on the boarder, I was lifting the strawberry plants we planted last year we had 6 but we didn't get any fruit as the mice got to them before the girls did, but over the year they have been very productive and I now have loads of plants, so they have now been transported to my hot bead where one of the local cats likes to snooze, so with such a guardian I am now in hopes of a bit of soft fruit.

Jobs for the weekend in the garden

Well its the last week of January and we have already been out in the garden digging over the soil but it is very cold but brilliant with blue skies and winter sun. 

I moved a lot of plants round to a micro climate by our front door as we don't have a  green house, we desperately would love a big one so we could grow more types of food for the family, but for now I have moved my flowers and seedlings around to give them the warmth boost and keep them away from frost.  The Mini daffs just look lovely and my mini helper loves to help water all the plants. 

 Our jobs for this weekend are clearing our drainage ditch and cutting back all the deadwood, plus the patch you see below we have earmarked for a fruit cage area so a lot of weeding digging over fencing the patch an hopefully in the next few weeks we will home make a fruit cage with some wood I won from the auction house, that will be interesting.

Lupins and foxgloves

 When we moved into our new house we had a sleeper raised front garden which is really lovely, I have always wanted a space like this and have enjoyed the last year of watching it from my kitchen window.   It is very large and L shaped the first thing I did was to cut the L shape into 2 and make the nearest to the kitchen into a tenders such as lettuces, radishes etc and lots of herbs.

 The second part nearest the street and opposite the kitchen window I wanted as my eye candy to view upon each day.  However the whole garden just seemed to have massive overrun planting with no structure and so I have a large task ahead to sort out.  I have pruned back sedge grass by 2/3 giving me a massive 30ft by 5ft patch and have been filling this space with all the tall and bushy plants like lupins and foxglove, but they have started flowering and had to stop.  I have also been battling with them self seeding everywhere and have managed to get 50 seedling which I spent 2 months bringing on and now I have a little shop on my drive where I am selling them along side a few foxgloves.

 There were far to many purple lupins in the boarder so I will be pulling some of these out to populate other parts of the garden as well as sell off to the local neighbours, and to break up the purples I purchased a pink and yellow west country lupin of which I will capture the seeds and pot on for the new year.

 As I said above I am in process of moving the lupins and foxgloves to the rear of the boarder and them bring in a mid level flowering beauty followed by low level planting however I am battling Aubrietia which is suffocating the planned low level planting.

 the lupins seem to flower really fast before seeding and I wish they would slow down so I could enjoy looking at them, it is great the foxgloves have popped up the same time as I just love their speckled throats and the whole patch is a buzz with bees.

 Bring on year two and I really hope to have a handle on this space.

Easter gardening

I love our new life in the country the wildlife is totally fab check out this handsome chap who has taken to our garden and has been trying to persuade a lady to move in too, he is so brave he even comes up to the patio to look at us.

I really want a herb garden next to the kitchen and have the perfect spot outside the kitchen window on the drive.  There is a raised boarder with sleepers and i have already started planting my chives and thyme that we brought from the last house there, also there is some existing rosemary and sage in potion too.

 I spend a fortune on fresh herbs at the supermarket as i use loads of them in my everyday cooking salads and drinks.  the soil is really great here well drained in good sunlight and you can pretty much plonk what every you like into it and it will grow, so my aim is to save some money and grow a tun of flat parsley, coriander, dill, soft salads like rocket and spicy leaves to see us through the season and hopefully not have to buy anymore from the shops.

I have also been moving loads of lupins and foxgloves from the front garden to the back new flower bed to pad it out a bit as they grow like made in a 1 foot square patch i managed to get 24 of each as seedlings that had self seeding in the herb section so i have potted these up and am planning to sell them outside the front of the house as a little plant sale.

 Ella and Sophie were given there own garden tools for Christmas and Ell helps me with the hoeing and raking and her she is checking out the soil.

 We have a massive patch for veg but it is fast filling up and daddy spent the Easter hols creating a potato bed which is massive and has early and mid season spuds growing in it, Yum cant wait for that first new potato smoothed in butter.  He is already growing peas beans and soya beans as well as onions, garlic and pumpkins.

 Sophie has been given a patch to grow strawberries in and we made her a little house with pea netting so the birds don't eat them all.

 At the start of the year we bought one of those plastic greenhouses and got busy planting up loads of seeds for both veg and flowers to support the garden, a few weeks back we had that gale and the whole thing blew away ripped to shreds and the seeds scattered everywhere.  So we have had to start all over again we have had to turn the hallway of our house into a seeding nursery and all the windowsills are now heaving under the weight of plants grabbing sunshine, that reminds me i must turn my parsley.

Spring flourish

 Finally days of blue skies and sunshine, warm weather wakes sleepy bulbs to lift their heads and don hats that make the garden come alive as if a carnival is coming.

 I am very happy with the pots at the front of the house last year we made the layered pots   and im surprised the pansies are still going strong with no sighs of stopping as the tulips crocus and iris barge their way up through soil.

 We saw our first buzzy bumbler today probably very hungry after sleeping all winter

 I love these polyantha victoriana gold lace they are so pretty i will grow more next year from seed

 lovely delicate woodland cyclamen

 Mean while down in the meadow the Phesants seem to also be feeling the effects of the spring weather and are starting to stalk the ladies.

We have been hard at it rolling the mud into paths carving up the mud square into plots  

Our big flower bed

 So exciting having a new garden no one has touched for us to do as we please with, so we decided to carve up a part of the lawn to make a flower bed.

After stealing the kids purple sand which was perfect for outlining the wavy shape in the lawn, our buddy Nev helped us take all the turf off the lawn. I bought a 50 meter hose pipe to help drain water from the house water butts down to the meadow and our flower bed was the same length, what a huge flower bed, i can only imagine how long the weeding is going to take.

It was back breaking work rotavating the bed, raking and picking out stones and house bricks.  Not that you would know it from the picture, but this is the sunny side of the garden, prime location for all my peonies and irises which i was over the moon to release from their pots along with the fatsia and lavenders i got from Hitchin lavender farm.  I am really looking forward to spending time choosing plants i like to fill this big boarder.

As it was half term i had a helper on hand to give me help putting together a little plastic house that has shelving inside, which we plan to use to help bring on seeds in, i think she did a good job.