Winter Jobs

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I've blogged but only because I've been overwhelmed with stuff at work. No excuse really!

Even though winter is setting in (slowly) in my part of the UK, there are still plenty of jobs to do in around the garden and allotment. I'm hoping to visit my allotment tomorrow if the weather allows it and get some much needed work done.

Do you remember those broad beans that I sowed a few weeks ago? Well, now they're growing. Not all of them but I always expect that. My advice is to never be disheartened by your seed germination. You aren't always going to get the same number of plants from the seeds you've sown so expect this and compensate when you can (I sow more seeds for this reason).

Seven broad beans growing here, three more in another tray and another four about to pop up through the soil!

One of those broad beans in my photo looks a little bent! That's because I had used a short cover for the tray and as it was the first bean to come up it grew and hit the roof. I've since changed the cover for a taller one to give the beans some more growing space before I transfer them to pots.

Other things I've done are quite simple jobs really. Two that I do which involve wildlife are topping up my compost heap and feeding the birds. Don't forget to give birds fresh water too, especially when there are hard frosts. I like to encourage the birds in my garden because so many eat insects in the spring and summer. Plus they're nice to watch.

Sparrows love this seed feeder the most but I also have niger seed and fat balls in the garden.

My green bin in the kitchen fills really quickly each week. I've just topped up the compost heap with this lot. The one thing I don't do over winter is turn the compost as I tend to get animals hibernating there. Slow worms tend to enjoy the warmth and usually appear in spring.

 To prevent my flowers getting frost damage I've protected some with mulch but my dahlias (grown from seed a couple of years ago) get dug up and stored in pots lined with straw. The tubers retain their energy and I plant these out when I see small shoots emerging from the roots in late spring.

Dahlias in the ground before digging them up. They have died back already and a week before taking them up I cut the stems right down.

One dug up, I put the roots in a pot and line with a bit of straw. Newspaper will do. I find they survive kept dry.

And finally...
I brought some tasty pumpkins home a while back and created some autumnal food. I love pumpkins and squashes and always grow these on my allotment. This year I made pumpkin pie using shortcrust pastry and just pumpkin with egg and dark sugar. Not bad. If anyone has any savoury pumpkin pie recipes let me know and I will try to bake one!

The brutes on my doorstep! I have more on the allotment still.

One sweet pumpkin pie. This one was delicious when eaten hot and served with cold, fresh double cream.

Hopefully I can fill you in on how the allotment work goes over the next few weeks, preparing the plots for next year very soon.

All the best and keep gardening!

Re-potting some exotics!

Not too long ago I treated myself to some new plants when I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall on a short holiday. The plants I brought were the Japanese Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta), Tea (Camellia sinensis) and the coffee plant (Coffea arabica). Now these plants were in need of re-potting and were suffering in their tiny pots and lack of correct nutrients.

I decided to mix up some soil, combined with two different varieties: ericaceous and cactus soil. The reason behind the two is that the plants came in soil that originally looked loamy but do thrive in acidic soils. The coffee plant came as a few plants in one, which I have kept in one pot until they grow bigger and stronger (then I'll separate them).

Here's what I used:

My three 'newbies' looking a little sorry for themselves - especially the coffee with its browned leaves.

Destination: new pots! Just a few I had kicking about at home in need of a job.

I originally brought this compost for some cactus I'm also growing but it makes a good mixture for other plants.

Acidic soil.

How the mixture looked at the end.

For each of the plants I changed the mixture until I felt it looked ok. The tea plant had a mix of ericaceous:cactus soil of 1:1, as did the coffee. With the sago palm (not really a palm but that's its common name), I added some normal potting compost to make the mixture 1:1:1, as this plant thrives in most soils.

All three are recovering well and I'll post the after pictures very soon but for now, thanks for reading!

Autumn walk with the family

On Saturday we had decided as a family to go on a walk in our local area. The weather was perfect for an autumn afternoon and the colours were beautiful so I couldn't resist but take my camera!

My daughter Morgan walking through dropped leaves.

The Lea Valley Walk - a great use for an old railway line.

Not my best photo - it's a bit blurred but the ivy looked great growing up the tree. There's also holly berries captured here.

My son Ralph posing (hubby and daughter in distance)

Berries are plentiful this time of year for birds. 

Another poor quality photo! Don't know why it came out blurry, but I wanted to add this as the colours are so lovely.

Tucked away, just off the Lea Valley walk, near a golf club are ruins of an old mill. You can see the wheel burried among debris here.

Still at the ruins and this is where water was guided. The river Lea isn't far from here but no longer runs through the old mill for obvious reasons. 

Morgan's turn to pose!

The day was glorious and we took advantage of the good weather as rain was forecast for Sunday (which it did indeed rain). I love all the seasons for their differences but Autumn is always striking for reds, oranges and yellows. There is food in the form of berries for the birds. We sometimes pick sloes so that Steve (my husband) can make sloe gin in time for Christmas but this year we've not bothered. To be honest with you, he made so much over the last few years that we're still catching up on drinking that!

The one thing that has been haunting my mind though is the ruins of the old mill we came across. I tried to look it up on the internet when I got home yesterday but there only appears to be four mills recorded historically in the local area between Harpenden and Wheathampstead and none of them appear to be this one. If anyone can help identify or knows the history of this mill, please let me know!

Till next time!

A fresh start

Well here it is. I've decided to start blogging about my gardening in the hope that I can maybe inspire other people to pick up some tools and get to work on the earth and what a day to start it all on. It's been a perfect autumnal day with sunshine and beautiful colours. I started tidying up my poly tunnel yesterday and today I've been sowing some veg for next year.

One of my raised beds in the poly. The fibrous stuff is straw from my poultry's bedding. It's been in the compost for about six months and is rotting down nicely. 

This is the variety of broad bean that I've sown today. I'll post progress on these later on. You may have noticed that I've sown them a little earlier than Nov. Only just though!

One of the two varieties of garlic I've sown. There were three bulbs in the pack but one was in poor condition, which only gave me two healthy cloves as the other cloves in that bulb were under attack by a pest.

A pricey variety with only one bulb in the pack. All the cloves were fine. I'm hoping this will give me a good yield and great flavour.

Alpine strawberries I grew from seed earlier this year. Some (little) fruit was produced but they were a late sowing. They are from the James Wong collection and are white coloured strawberries. Can you spot the wolf spider among the leaves?

This was one of the unhealthy cloves in the Thermodrome pack. Looks like a pest ate its way through. 

During my clean up operation I picked these little snails out of the poly. I could see them laying eyes on potential tasty treats so I moved them on quickly! I don't put down pellets often because I tend to have frogs living in the poly over summer. When I know they are hibernating/overwintering then I may use pellets if necessary.

One garlic bulb can give you quite a few cloves. The varieties I've sown have given me ten cloves per bulb on average. You can see the unhealthy bulb in the background there on the right. 

Not the best picture but I wanted to show you how I planted my garlic cloves. They are spaced apart as per instructions from the supplier at 4 inches. They are buried an inch deep and I used a small plank to line them up as neatly as possible.

  The work I did today was quick and easy. Best of all it made me feel quite relaxed but it's not all easy work. I don't want to put people off, but gardening isn't always relaxing and rewarding. It can equally be annoying and disheartening at times. I've had my fair share of both good and bad experiences but I want to show people what real gardening is all about. Don't get me wrong, I love watching gardening programmes on the TV but they do make it all look so easy and with great results almost every day. I wish it were like that! Apart from the poly tunnel, I also have two allotment plots and I'll be blogging about those too. From time to time I'll share some tips with you and I'll share good news/bad news.

Thanks for reading.