Lions Beware.

I was determined to get into the garden today, always planned to come rain or shine. Well it was rain, surprise, surprise but I made the job more appealing by taking out with me some essentials, in the way of

 a flask full of hot chocolate (laced with Bailey's Irish Cream - oh yeah, now we're talking!) Just what you need on a cold, wet, wintry, dull, dismal, dank, dire day.



First job was dealing with the lion sized kitty litter tray that is my vegetable raised bed. I cleared this out of all it's remnants last week and ever since then it is like a massive beacon going off to all the cats in the area - 'woohoo, someone has opened a massive cat toilet for us!'

Yes I'm talking about the likes of you!!:

Looking like butter woulnd't melt - My parent's evil cat, Diego

Last year I had the same problem and stood small rods of wood and stones in the bed to deter them, a bit unslightly but probably very uncomfortable on a cat's behind. This year I had a different (hopefully better) idea.

The added advantage being that it might kill off a few weeds in the process. Just look at that poor box ball above the bed - why is it losing it's leaves????? arghh

Next it was into the nice tidy greenhouse (it won't look as tidy as this again until next winter I think)

 to deal with some very late in the season jobs. Jobs I should have done a good while ago (slap my wrists).
I lifted some dahlias (too late, I know, I forgot them, but you never know they may survive) and hung them to dry for a few days. When they have dried a bit I will get all that wet soil off and bring them into the garage to continue drying off.

 Then repotted some digitalis that I had growing from seed all last year and have survived surprisingly well despite complete and utter neglect, yes, can you believe it, me, the ultimate in an organised gardener neglecting something! Well anything that battles against all odds and still survives deserves a little bit of attention, even if it comes rather late in the day.

Finally I came back indoors (mainly because my hot chocolate was finished) and stared lovingly at some of the seeds that arrived yesterday.

And very happy I was too.

Carrot

I dealt with the raised bed yesterday, clearing it out and preparing it for this new season. In it I found my entire carrot crop for 2013:

Impressive eh?

Not what you may call a roaring success but, you know what, the one mouthful it gave me was delicious and I will try harder next year. It may be tiny but it is so beautifully formed that it makes me want to try again this year.
In a nutshell, I planted my carrots as an afterthought too late in the season and they got rather swamped by the purple sprouting broccoli who stole all of their light, so I gave them up for dead. But here was one fighter.

Top 5 garden mistakes

As I am using the winter to prepare for the next growing season I have been reflecting on the errors I made over the last couple of years and want to avoid this year. These are what I think are my top five mistakes (only four of which I made). In other news I have put my name on a waiting list for an allotment. It will be a very long wait, no doubt.

1. Over exuberance (Planting too early) - I am almost doing this again and it comes from a keenness to get started. Last year I started planing my seeds so early that they were chomping at the bit to get outside and in danger of becoming leggy or dying because of the cold Spring we had here. Of course this is because looking out on the grey wintry garden we are all looking forward to Spring coming and sowing seeds makes us believe it is that one step nearer. If you live in a colder part of the country (like I do) I have decided it is worth waiting for the second month option mentioned on the back of the seed packet (rather than the first day of the first month :-)).
2. Growing too much - Beginning a garden is a bit like going to an all you can eat buffet (when you are greedy like me), you want to grow everything, regardless of how much room you have. Last year I wanted to grow some lobelia and it came in a packet of 1500 seeds and, yes, I planted the lot! I have since learned (hopefully) that you don't actually have to plant all the seeds in a packet in one go. Good quality seeds have a really good germination rate so it is worth planting what you need with just a few spare. Also be realistic about what you can fit in your garden. I grew so many varieties last year that lots of plants ended up in the compost which is a shame and I was overwhelmed with volume and didn't manage to look after a lot of them properly.
3. Only grow what you want to eat - Starting a veg garden it is easy to get carried away with the idea of growing a whole section of something unusual but ask yourself if you will eat it all. It sounds obvious but often we end up growing things because we can rather than because we like it. Choose your veg based on whether you eat it regulary, if you really love it and if it is expensive to buy in the shops. Then cut it down to how many you have space for and time to look after. If space is no object then by all means try something new and interesting but most of us don't have this luxury.
4. Improve your soil - I have spoken to people near where I live who have said 'oh the soil is terrible around here, nothing will grow'. Well I think I have proved them wrong, but I have spent a lot of time and (yes) money on the soil to improve it's condition. You can't just chuck seeds in some dirt and expect them to grow well. They may grow but the majority will be poor specimens. The comparison would be you living on a diet of only chocolate and crisps. You wouldn't die (well you would in time) but you would hardly be healthy. Plants need good nutrition themselves to perform to their best. Once I have dug out a new bed I add lots of garden compost to it and well rotted manure. And I don't just do it once. Every year I have added new compost and/or manure to the existing beds too. I have used mulch to lay on the surface too. This year I have my first load of home made garden compost too which will all go back in the ground. The results have been terrific.
5. Poor spacing - This is something I am still learning with seedlings. So often when a seedling is being transferred to the garden we look at how tiny it is and how vast the space it is being placed is and thing it can go too close to the next one, without thinking about how big it becomes. I love beds that are absolutely full to busting, but not at the expense of the plant. The spacing guide on the back of the seed packet is there to help, not as a sort of party-pooper. I am very guilty of this and I promise to be better this year, honest.

Well I hope these are useful to any would be or novice gardeners. I still have loads and loads to learn, after all, I have only been at this 2 years, many people with a life time of experience will still say they are learning. That is the joy of gardening.

Inspiration

Here is my garden inspiration for the day.

I absolutely love wisteria. I haven't got one although I would like to try, mostly because my mother has kept on warning me that they are a) very hard trees to look after and will probably die and b) they are heavy and will break what they climb up. However I am still tempted to disregard what she says and give it a go anyway. I have read in the wonderful book 'Sweet peas for Summer' by Laetitia Marklouf that  it is even possible to grow wisteria in a pot. Not sure I believe her. Maybe if I find a good sheltered spot and a good support I will try growing one (in the ground) one of these days. I love the rustic bench and the weird sculpture thing in front of the fence.

New year. New look.

For three years my blog has looked the same, so I have decided to experiment with a few updates and a slightly new look. I've added a new 'about me' tab as things in my life have hugely changed since I started blogging. I've also added a 'my garden' tab with some photos. I am sure there will be a few more changes as I experiment more, but for now a change is doing me good.

Also I suppose my goals are slightly different now as it is 3 years since I started the blog. I increasingly am posting about gardening and cooking. I no longer really have any house renovations to do as, for the most part they are finished now after 2 years of living here so there will be less of that.

My goals and ideals are still just as they have always been and everything I do will be done on a budget. I don't know how the blog content may evolve over the coming year, but it will be fun to find out and I hope you come along with any changes.

Happy New Year to you all.

Dan

Round up of the year

I have never gone in for New Year in the least. It is my mothers birthday today and, as a family, we always celebrated that rather than the date change. It is many years, I have to admit, since I have even stayed up until midnight, much more likely to be found tucked up in bed like a chaste old maid. So no doubt this year will be no different.
I also don't tend to go in for things like new resolutions. I have always believed that if you want to change something you just start immediately, there is no point in imbuing the date with a significance that it is going to help. Whatever works for you I suppose. I changed my life by simply making a decision and sticking to it, which had nothing to do with a new year.

Much more interesting to me is spending just a few moments reflecting on the year that has been, the highs and lows, the changes, the achievements. There have been changes in my attitude towards where I live. The first year I was here was about making my new house habitable. This year has been about making it my home. There have been disasters, a foot through my bath meant I was without a bath for over 6 months, but with a (hell of a lot of) effort, I have now a completed bathroom that I am proud of as well as new skills learnt in doing this myself. As I showed in my last post my garden has really come to something lovely this year too. That aside, I have not really done any more work on the house and I feel it is just about finished (or as finished as it can be on my budget). So I have used the time to fully settle in here and put down roots. Long, permanent roots.

Of course putting down roots has meant that there have been struggles in other ways. Leaving for months at a time for work has become a strain this year and I realised something very important: that although I had changed my life and moved to the other side of the country I had not committed fully to the change and had left my working life in the South. Well, of course it was slightly more complicated than that but I found the drag of packing a suitcase for 8 weeks at a time away from home in a place I didn't want to be, hours of driving and a whole summer away from home, is not the way I want to be so this year has brought a massive attitude change with all of that. Now I have fully committed to a life here I have no regrets, no doubts, nothing negative. Well that has to be worth plenty.

There have been ups and downs, new friends made, others lost. I have blogged (all be it sporadically at times) and lots of you have followed the journey. Some of you have gone beyond that and made the effort to check that I am alright at times of silence (you know who you are) and every one of my followers is appreciated.

Oh, and I turned 40 :-)

I think it is worth spending a few minutes reflecting on the year and looking forward to what the next will bring and I wish you all joy and luck over the next 12 months.

Garden Dreaming

As the beginning of next year approaches I find my mind turning to the garden again. It appears that not a lot is happening  out there at the moment but there is a lot of promise of things to come. I squelched on down to the greenhouse this morning to grab a spade as I had a tiny camellia and a rose that wanted to go in. Even though it was gently raining, the wind has died down and it was a pleasure to be outside again and to soak up the inspiration I always get from being in the garden. Somehow it fuels my imagination and I came in all excited about the prospect of what I will grow next year.
I am pretty organised with my seeds (well I am a pretty organised man in general but I take it to extreme with my seeds) and as it happens I still have a lot of half packets all of which have best before dates on them for 2014 and a few that I saved from plants this year. That means I may as well plant every single seed and see what happens.
I then made myself a hot chocolate and had a happy couple of hours going through gardening catalogues indulging in a bit of day dreaming what I could do. I chose 10 new sorts of flowers I want to try (I don't need any new veg seeds this year as I have plenty) as Mr Fothergills has a buy 4 get a 5th free on all seed packets, plus £5 off orders at the moment. It meant that I got 10 pack of seeds for just £12 which is a bit of a bargain. Probably means I will have way too many plants, but I will enjoy it all thoroughly. I have bought Echinacia (so far I have had zero success with this), Chrysanthemum Snowland, Ageratum Red Sea, Morning Glory heavenly blue, Cornflower Blue Ball, Hollyhock Giant, Campanula, Geums and some Rudbeckia. The tax man has just sent me a substantial refund as I paid him far too much money last year, so I thought the least I could treat myself to was some seeds. My brother gave me the most wonderful Christmas present too this year: an electric heated propagator so I am very excited to try this out in a few months.
Now I will have the fun, over the next few weeks, of deciding where I will put the new plants, I will change my mind a dozen times and in the end they will probably go in new spots, but it is such fun experimenting. My brand new bed (the largest border in the garden so far) is, at the moment a quagmire of clay and manure with a few new perennials in there (and a small ornamental cherry tree) and so much of these new plants will be going in here. I will do more sweet peas this year as they are heavenly both in sight and smell, but I will choose these seeds another time.

My garden has gone from this:

to this, in just two years:

And from this:

to this:

So what will 2014 bring? Oh it is going to be such fun to find out.