The good life mum: Garden

Showing posts with label Garden. Show all posts

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.

Motivating rotavating

the last few days has seen the temperature rise to 5 degrees and we feel the promise of spring in the air especially as their are snow drops popping up all over the place. Last year we had a lovely red tractor come visit our meadow and turn it over making some proper farmer style farrows which we had to leave over the winter to let all the hard frost in to kill the bad bacteria and give the worms a chance to do their job.

Now with spring motivating us to go out more to the garden and giving us hope and promises of good life dreams we are able to rotavate those giant farrows down into crumbly manageable soil, and what wonderful soil we have too i cant wait to get my hands into it. Above is a picture of Nev and his lovely bigger red Massey Ferguson tractor with a farming rotavator attached. With the promise of spring and the new land being turned over we cant help feeling excited and very motivated about being out doors in the garden.

Tree planting time

We are so excited with our plot and have been talking for a while about adding more structure to the flat green that is our garden as well as giving us more produce to harvest for the family.

Here are 6 of our new trees that will be the new addition to the back of the meadow. We have a Butlers cobnut, a larger than the standard Kent cobnut, our resident squirrel has already been spotted rubbing his paws. We have a Sunburst cherry and yes we are preparing for an on slaught from the blackbirds. A Victoria plum, a Merry weather Damson, a late Sunset apple and an early Discovery apple. We also have a Sumac, golden twisted willow, a lilac and a purple magnolia, to plant with in the main garden.

Our first time planting trees and we put out the stakes for placement before cutting the turf 2ftx2ft before digging down to plant the roots making sure we gave the roots a shake to settle them into their new home.

So you would think this whole experience a milestone for our garden would be a joyous one celebrating the planting of trees. The whole experience was not, but one of 2 children kicking off, being naughty and crying hanging off our legs as you can see from the snot bubbles and dribble of Ella below. I am just glad we didn't order more trees.

Cutting our first bed

So we have a rather large green space with little in it which is great for us to make it as we want. At the bottom of the garden is a willow from the neighbour that bows over and Sophie hides here as a little monster to jump out at us.

We decided to cut our first bed here, and to keep Sophie's hide out we have used some large slabs for her to hop about across the bed.

Once the bed was cut we started the planting which took ages as we planted a huge amount of bulbs plus 100 bare root wallflowers, plus hostas and a bird bath with alpines. I can not wait to see if all the hard comes together in Spring

Were we live has great vintage shops and i could help picking up these old tools, i find that buying the new ones from teh garden centers only seem to last a year or 2 before the fork spikes bend or the handles fall off, they sure did make tools built to last in the old days, which is why i got these and they have been hard at work since we got them.

Whilst we were working on the bed our neighbour came home from work ...by helicopter!!!

Finally with all the plants in i'm now scratching my head as to how to water it all, as it is so far away from anything. So we started another project after this one where we have bought 130 meters of hose and are pumping water from rain buts to give this lot a good soaking.

Escape to the country

We have starred in our own personal episode of Escape to the county, after 6 month of searching we found our dream home.

A nightmare run up to exchange and completion saw us move into our new home before we had even completed on the sale, very risky i know but we needed to get on with our lives, we finally got to relocate across the country and start a fabulous new chapter in our lives.

I thought i would share a few garden pictures, we have an acre plot and the large front has a deep herb boarders raised with sleepers. The soil is crazy good here in Suffolk and every thing seems to grow 20 times better than normal, check out that rosemary!!!

Here is our back garden flipping enormous a great big green pitch, a blank canvas for us to work on over the years, top picture is from the bottom of the garden up to the house, and the bottom picture is from the top of the garden looking down.

Did you see that fence at the bottom of the garden .... oh yes that is also ours, we discovered we also have a meadow !!!!

Insert a happy dance here >>

The flowers have all died down and the grass browned and grown really really tall so we decided to cut it all down to see how big it was. It was big so big not even my wide angel could fit it all in and of course the guys had to pitch a tent and have been camping out ever since.

We have lots of work but loads of ideas to and cant wait to get going.

Exotic Orchids

This week i though i would bring some snaps of some beautiful orchids, unfortunately my pictures suck a bit as i was being rushed, but still their beauty and colours are interesting to look at. For some reason they remind me of ladies in carnival head ware, what do you think?

Wonderful Water Lilies

We live near a canal and it is bustling fully of native water lilies i think they are called Spatterdocks and they seem to love the deep water in the canal as they all the way up one side of the water leaving just enough room for the barges to travel.

So from the simple yellow native water Lilly to some more ornamental pretty ones found on a day out that anyone would love floating in a pond or lake and seeing as they are all bursting forward and blooming this time of year here are some snaps to show how beautiful they are.