Belated photo...

So when I said I'd post a photo tomorrow, I guess I should have said "when I get round to it!"

Well, better late than never!

The garden, taken 6th April:

And just so I can easily compare, here's the photo I posted before, taken 10th March:

Not bad hey *very smug grin* :-)

My seedlings are/were doing well... they had a suprise roller coaster ride today when the wind decided it wanted to push my growhouse over :-(

Most seedlings escaped unharmed, a few weren't wearing seatbelts and came out of their modules, but I've scraped them from the floor and replanted them... fingers crossed!

Yesterday I also sowed some carrot seed. I did one row in the right front bed and did some others in toilet roll tubes, from a tip I found on My Zero Waste. Only had eight saved, so will keep collecting and sow my next batch into the new rolls... Unfortunately, the tubes were "safely" sitting in my growhouse when it decided to have a rest. They didn't fair as well as the seedlings... The contents were still intact, but not sure which way up they are supposed to be :-S

Also got my potatoes planted, decided to use planters for them as the beds that I was intending to put them in aren't ready yet, plus plans have changed and I'm not putting the beds how I originally intended...

Here are my updated plans:

Don't know if you can tell, but am now going to take out some of the lawn to make room for four 2x1m beds. I'd originally pland to do two 1x1m beds either side of a 2x1m bed, running paralel to the front two. Well, once I got buying seed, I quickly realised that there was not going to be enough growing space... still not sure that there will be enough, but need to keep some space in the garden for the kids to play in... as long as they're not playing too close to my veggie's!!! lol. Think regular trips to the park may be in order :-S

Well, the extra beds have been ordered as well as the compost to fill them. Have gone for the bulk buy bags this time, works out cheeper and have a better idea of exactly how much soil is needed. Also ordered some bark mulch stuff for the paths between the beds.

BTW sorry for any gross spelling mistakes... it's late and I haven't a clue where the spell check is on here... could copy and paste into Word, but I really can't be bothered at the mo!

New Found Land.

So here it is, my newly uncovered corner of the garden :-)

In fact, the area of fence where the clematis was growing has never before been seen by us!

And today my battle of the brambles continued... I liberated the old washing line post and white planter, only the mini pine tree thing is left to be freed. Again work was halted due to the fact that I could not see what I was doing. Maybe I should invest in one of those spotlights the motorway workmen use... The one's that make you think you're being kidnapped by aliens... Maybe that's just me?

Anyway, I'll post progress pics tomorrow :-)

Here's my onion sets that I planted the other day.

They seem to be doing OK so far, one got pulled up by my three year old, but the birds don't seem to be interested... yet :-S

BTW, they haven't grown that much in 2 days... they'd got impatient waiting for me to plant them out and decided to start without me. To be fair they have been waiting for at least a year...

And here's my mini growhouse, that so far is still standing (it's been pretty windy round here today).

Touch wood, it's doing a good job looking after my little pots of herbs I bought the other day. Not sure it's going to stay in this location, just put it there for the time being...

Also, some of my seed that I sowed Friday night have sprouted! Actually one of them was very excited to be planted and had begun sprouting Saturday morning! Didn't even think that was possible?! Think all the broccoli has sprouted, some of the salad seeds, a couple of cauliflower's and one leek... come on you tomatoes, lupins and lizzie's!! Tried to take some photo's of those, but was a bit dark and kept blurring so will try again tomorrow :-)

The battle commences...

The weather was good today and we had no plans for outings... It was a good day to wage war on the brambles at the back of the garden!

Got so much done that the garden waste bin is completely chocker and the wheelbarrow is overflowing with the brambles that wouldn't fit in the bin. The top left corner is almost cleared of the thorny stuff, as well as the overgrown fuchsia, clematis and the evergreen shrub thing that I don't know the name of... one of the ones that grows herring bone style and gets red berries in the winter. Well the roots are still in the ground, but they've had a serious haircut.

Phew! I may not be able to walk later due to back pain, but I am very happy. Got to walk in an area of the garden that hasn't seen human's for the last 5+ years :-)

On a practical note, I can strongly recommend wearing a double layer of fleece to protect yourself from brambles. My arms did not feel one prickle, even better than the gardening gloves I was wearing and they're the best one's I've tried!

It was too dark out by the time I came in, so will have to take some pic's of my progress tomorrow... Can't wait to get a good look at my work :-D

Oh yeah, I almost forgot! I also planted out my onion sets, and sowed some spring onion and radish seeds. All in the left raised bed... Not sure if they will work as they were all left overs from last years feeble attempts at growing stuff. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

I've been sewing :-)

And not with my sewing machine :-)


I've been reading one of the books I ordered from Amazon and decided I should just go ahead and buy the seed. Yes I might end up with an abundance of veg seed that I couldn't grow very well or wasn't fond of the taste of, but it's so much cheaper than the plugs and if the plugs died off that would be very annoying!!


So today we had a trip to the garden centre and I bought some seeds :-) Got broccoli, cauliflower, leek, tomato (outdoor), French bean and some busy lizy and lupin seeds for other areas of the garden. Also got some potted herbs, lavender, rosemary, thyme, sage, marjoram, oregano, lemon balm and lemon verbena. I think DH is already waiting for them to die... I don't have a good track record with potted plants :-S They're now keeping my newly erected mini growhouse company... hopefully it will help break them into our garden... The seeds have been sewn into the propagating trays I bought the other day and are on the dining table for the time being... Think I'll keep them in the house until they germinate and then hopefully gradually move them into the growhouse.


Yesterday I hit the local library and raided the gardening section. Found a book on weeds, I have no idea what most of the stuff growing in our garden is, or how to best get rid of it, so thought it might be useful. It mentions a way to clear a large area of weeds where you clear the surface of weeds, cover it with newspapers/cardboard/old carpet and then spread on a layer of compost. Doing this blocks the light from the weeds and they die off, plus any new weed seeds just lie dormant. This method seems to go well with the book I got about no dig gardening, yes there's a theme here... LAZY gardening!! I will have to do some work though as will have to dig out the plants that are in the area, as well as lots of brambles :-S Apparently, if I'm understanding it properly, I can then put my raised beds straight of top of all this and it will gradually just break down into the soil. Cool!! Time to collect some newspapers!

Blast from the past.

Guess what I found the other day...

This was my original garden plan, didn't get very far with that one!

This is the more recent one I began (two years ago...), looks more acurate, except I've now got to the stage where the garden is ahead of the plan!! It's going to change from this though. In this the lawn was going to be extended further back to make it more of a square shape, but think I'm just going to leave it as it is now. Mainly because it will leave more room for the raised beds at the back of the garden.

Progress has been slowed this week due to the weather, but I did make good progress last week. I ordered the compost and managed to get the first bed filled... I then got very carried away and leveled the second area off, built the bed and filled it. And all on the same day as I had lugged the 18 bags of compost from the front garden to the back... Needless to say, I was a bit achey the following day, but very pleased with myself :-)

Here's Bed 1 all filled up and ready to go.

Just need to clear the top right corner now so that I can get the next bed into place, that one is going to be a 1mx1m bed, but double the height. I'm planning to grow some spuds in there...

Which leads me to...

My chitting potatoes... what on earth does chitting mean and who came up with that name?!

Since getting the beds into place and filled with compost, it's been a real challenge resisting the urge to buy every lovely looking veg seed on the market. I know its already sowing time for some things but really don't want to rush into buying anything and then wish I'd got some other variety. I'm also wondering whether getting plug plants might be a good choice, as can see what I like growing without waisting loads of seeds... Only problem being the plugs are much more expensive... hmmmm... what to do!!

I ordered some books from Amazon last week and they arrived yesterday. Since they arrived I've been trying to read bit's whenever I get the chance. The one seems pretty good, haven't looked at the other too much yet, but seems like it could be really useful. I'll blog about them another time though!

The Story So Far...

So in 2003 we moved into our first house, it was great! We had a space of our own, and like any new home owner we couldn't wait to make our mark...

Here's a glimpse of what the garden was like when we moved in just over 7 years ago...

The existing garden was maintained by the gentleman next door. It was neat and tidy, but not really our cup of tea... lots of fuscia's, hundreds of daffodils and some shrubs in the corners that grew like crazy!! Still don't know what they were, we got rid of them pretty quick!

Being new of house and all, we didn't have much cash free for changing things like kitchens and bathrooms. The easiest (cheapest) option we had was the garden... I say we, really it's just me... DH has no interest in the garden at all. Since having the kids he does mow the lawn, but that's pretty much it really, so the current state of the garden is really my fault :-S Sorry Danny xxx

Any way, I formulated some garden design Ground Force style and set about digging up the existing plants, the path and marking out my plan... I can't even remember what I was gonna do now... this is pretty much as far as I got...

I thought it was brilliant and was really pleased with my progress... Looking back I appreciate the garden as it was before I dug it all up... Oh well!

Fast forward 6 years, and this is what it looks like...

The path never officially got filled in, it just grew over... The navel in the middle of the lawn is where we were going to put a rotary line. That is until we dug the hole only to descover concrete at the bottom... We're still deciding the fate of the line, do we dig another hole elsewhere in the garden? We contacted the counsil and service providers to see if the concrete is some kind of water pipe or whatever else might be lurking under the lawn, but seems we'll have to get a surveyor out to find out what it is...

We did do some work out there the year before last. I deweeded all up the right border and planted a second apple tree, a maple tree and a camelia. You can just make tham out amongst the new weeds...

We also dug up some of the patio near the house, I had some romantic notion of making a herb garden in these two beds nearest the house and growing veg at the back... Only problem being that the newly formed beds became very water logged, very quickly. The veg worked a bit though, I grew some radish, onions and potatoes in the area currently housing the paddling pool...

Around Christmas I was browsing the web, looking for solar powered Christmas lights to go on the bush by our front door... BTW, if you're thinking of being eco-friendly and getting some of these, don't bother... They were up for about a week before somebody decided to kindly remove them for us... On the plus side, they were rubbish, so no great loss, except for the £20... Anyway, while looking at these lights, I stumbled upon the idea of raised beds...

After doing a little research I decided to go with the Link-a-Bord  sets as they seemed pretty simple and very low maintenance, which is very important for me :-S Well they took less than 48 hours to arrive and I already have one of the 2x1m beds in place. Only problem is I don't have anything to put in it yet... Really need to get the compost ordered...

Fits quite nicely with my collapsable compost bin. Supposed to work 4x faster than a regular one? The main reason I wanted this one is that it seemed easier to move around if I decide I want it somewhere esle... Plus, can just fold it down and shove it in the shed if the whole veg dream fails...

I subscribed to Grow Your Own mag yesterday, with an offer of 60 plants free (aka, included in the price). Hopefully they will be okayish and will give me an idea of what I like/can grow at home.

P.S. I also hope the bed wont be walking off in the night to join my Christmas lights...

Blog 3...

Oh man 3 blogs on the go.... Think I've started a new addiction, the blogaholic :-)

Anyway, I've had this ambition for a while now to grow vegetables in the back garden... or at least maybe have a garden that has more growing in it than grass and weeds... Plus a couple of apple trees...

So here we go, it's finally begun...

I bought a compost bin on Saturday and ordered some raised beds yesterday...

Today began the war of the weeds!!

Really need to order some soil/compost to fill the beds with when they arrive and probably need to get a coldframe of some kind so that I can begin sowing seeds.