Saturday, March 15, 2003
Thursday, 13 March 2003
Didn't do a lot today in the garden. We watered the garden early in the morning because unbelievably it needed it and I want our little seeds to thrive, well germinate at least!
After making my poor child walk all over town and play in the park (again!) I dragged him up the road from the park to a strange nursery/smallholding which had masses of plants for sale. Granted not all them looked bushy and lovely because, unfortunately, this nursery was flooded. Fortunately, for us though, she was offering the plants at a reduced price. They all had good healthy rootballs and we managed to procure three big pots of herbs for a £1 each. Two different varieties of mint - garden and curly and a feverfew. In addition I bought a french lavender to replace one which was damaged by the frost.
Didn't position them in the garden today - will do it soon though!
Friday, 14 March 2003
Today Keith returned home early from work and continued work on attaching logs to brick. These will continue the log border which we have fenced the veggie area in with. In addition they also help to weight our plastic greenhouse down with. Despite protestations from friends (you know who you are) I think it looks good!
Whilst Keith was working on that and Harry was filling his wheelbarrow up with goodness knows what I made a brave attempt on a small pine/fir tree which was too big for our garden. Keith managed to break through most the roots, but it is still steadfast in the ground. I dug all around and stuck my shovel in to see where the roots still existed and was rewarded with an extra piece of root. Once pointed out to my husband he took up his trusty mattock and cut his way through. Eureka! The tree is now out and soon the base to our shed will go down.
Erm, the herbs and lavender are still not repositioned!!! :-)
Today:
I am absolutely knackered today and feel as though my head is filled with cotton wool - I shan't be doing any gardening today. I have watered the veggie bed when I went out to peg out the washing. I have also been reading about gardening and how plants grow and discovering that my propagators should really be in a warm, but *dark* place. Have therefore removed them from the windowsill to the airing cupboard. I don't know why I didn't just do this originally, as it is what I did with my tomatoes a couple of years ago and they yielded excellent results. Watch this space.
Herbs and lavender definitely not being planted out today! :-(
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Potted history:
Well I did wonder where to begin, so why not at the very beginning? ;-) I would love a smallholding, so would my 4 yr old Harry, but husband Keith would not! He feels that my desire for one is just a passing whim, so I need to prove to him that I can be a capable gardener and competent in animal husbandry.
We (Harry and I) are dabbling in growing various vegetables and flowers at the moment. We have planted mustard cress, unfortunately it was the green manure variety and possibly not for eating I don't know! It's bushy and thriving on the windowsill, I must do something with it before it turns into triffids and takes over the living room! Similarly, we have some potatoes which are chitting away, I really must plant them soon, as they will be one mass of sprouts and nothing else! We have also grown a couple of marigolds which I intend on companion planting next to our tomatoes.
With regards to the animal husbandry, well...we have managed to entice quite a variety of wildlife into the garden, not including Harry we have a nice range of birds and a squirrel. I shall be helping with the lambing at a local farm soon and so shall acquire a little experience there. It could be a little hairy (or woolly) for Harry in the first couple of weeks, so he shall join me once the births are mainly over! He will possibly get to feed some of the lambs or at the very least pat their heads! Harry and I visited the park today and being the only ones there, ended up surrounding in ducks. We walked into town and bought some bread and ended up feeding about 50 ducks! Er, and we have two cats!
Up until recently we have just been content with the odd bit of weeding and pruning as winter weather and other projects will allow. In late January we acquired an allotment and it is still not completely dug over. We will get there, I am undecided about what to grow there yet, but it's coming on, a bit late I fear, oh well!
When we finally made the veggie area in the garden, we also dug in a Belfast sink which was left here when we moved in. It is now filling up quite nicely with herbs and surrounded by primroses, it looks quite pretty!
Yesterday - Tuesday, March 11th 2003:
Had a bit of non-day as it was raining and we hadn't shifted our backsides outside as planned! The afternoon was better and so decided to make it a productive one. Visited neighbours first. Some chap up the road has a greenhouse in his garden, so I decided to be bold and and ask what sort of staging he had in his greenhouse and whether he could recommend somewhere locally to buy some. He said that his greenhouse (it's gorgeous, one of the dutch barn types) is ancient, about 20 years old and he made some of the staging and some of it came with the greenhouse. D'oh! It wasn't a completely wasted visit because in his greenhouse he had a big batch (?) of frogspawn hatching. So Harry got to have a look at that and his huge fish in the pond! We visited the lady across the road and asked if she would still like a climber (I think honeysuckle) that we have in the garden. She was very keen to acquire it. So instead of waiting - I promised her a passionflower climber before, waited weeks and then Keith dug it up and managed to chop the root off and into pieces! - I dug it up there and then and delivered it. We are planning to move the composter to the spot that the climber occupied. I am a little afraid of the logistics of this however, because when I lifted it up at the bottom, I could see a nice dark compost, but then it started oozing. Think we may have added too much tiddle!!!
Right I'm getting to the end of yesterday. We sowed some lovage seeds around the garden, I know they grow quite tall, so we mostly sowed them around the back of the border against the fence.
We sowed some carrots into our newly dug vegetable patch area in the garden, just a few as I want to see if they will take. I intend to fashion some sort of cloche for them. In the meantime I may just weight down some bubble wrap!
We finally put some use to our seed trays and sowed in tomato, lettuce, more marigolds and sweet peppers. I don't have any propagators this year, but have improvised by placing on top some clear plastic containers which I acquired from a visit to the scrapstore - bless them, long may they serve us home educators!
So they are on the windowsill with the mini-triffid mustard cress and I shall be keeping an eye on them, as will my little Percy Thrower!!!
Today - Wednesday, 12 March 2003:
Started the day by finally popping all the sweetpea, evening primrose and evening stock seeds from the pods which we acquired last year and we scattered these in the borders, I'm pretty sure they will take. I also scattered a few in the veggie plot for good measure and to ensure good cross pollination from the bees!
Today, I returned to the allotment, armoured with many socks and thick boots to deter whatever keeps making a meal of me. We managed to almost finish all the digging over - I'm very pleased. There was a patch of plants on there, like thick wild geraniums and their roots were extensive, digging them up was hell and I have a sore back now as a result. I need to return to rake over the ground and remove any last straggling bits of grass and thistles and add the soil improver. I'm actually quite sure that it doesn't need this as it has been well fed over the years.
Right off to have a bath now with my little 'erbert, alas I have no Rosemary oil to soothe my aches and pains as my beautiful child has been putting it down the toilet to make it smell nice! Arrrghhh! :-)
