My first garden!

Update: not much happening and I've started back at work. Met somebody who is also into gardening who it planning to make his own wine from the blackberries and raspberries he's going to harvest over the weekend. Got me thinking about my excess fruit. Instead of freezing it for crumble, I could get it brewed into fruit cider/wine. Let's see eh?

Anyone done this before that wants to share their views?

 

Ours have got another week here.

I can't help you with the wine Rad but this forum may be of help to you......

http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/forums/the-gc-buttery.93/

 

How do I manage to miss all these threads? That's a lot of fun reading for the evening!

 

If you want a quicker result, you could always make some jam. Much faster tasting of your efforts.....

 

Good point! Although I don't seem to eat much jam I have it every couple of days but I haven't even used one jar since I moved in to this house 3 months ago. I don't understand how it's lasting so long!

With the fruit I get, I'll make some jam, eat some of the fruit and then turn the rest into some kind of wine concoction probably

 

Well I survived! Been manic and I'm frazzled. I've now got a few hours spare to look at the garden. I'm going to get some of the lower leaves of the potatoes chopped out to help improve air flow. That should help prevent blight. They've grown quite a bit!

I've also managed to finally order my fleece to go over the raised bed. I was also thinking about making a hemispherical dome out of tubing (like the raised bed cloche) to go over the potatoes but I think I'm going to get creative and extend the raised bed cloche further back and the potatoes can share the space.

With regards to the wormery, they have had another handful of worm food (the stuff they've grown up eating) and this weekend is the first time I'm going to feed them. Cast your votes (no pun intended) on what I should feed them first! I'm thinking banana peel. They'll get a very very small handful in one of the corners tomorrow and then 2 days later they'll get another very very small handful in another corner. After a week I should start to see the food going a tad mouldy and being eaten. This is the bit where it get's a little tricky because it's easy to overfeed them.

With regards to the wormery bin, I've been getting all the food scraps and gathering them up. Bear in mind that there's 2 of us and we've only been filling it for 2 weeks.... we've already collected THREE KILOGRAMS of organic matter! We eat what we cook, nothing comes off the plate into the bins. It's the stuff like onion skins, banana peels, tea bags etc, the stuff we can't use in recipes, would have gone to waste! That's all going to break down into lovely compost and worm poo! I've been adding stuff like garlic skins, onions, citrus and other things that worms don't like but the plan is to get this into the compost heap. Eventually the worms will be able to handle everything I throw at it and I won't have to worry about attracting the local rats. I've also got it in compostable bags. I need to find out how fast they break down though. Don't want hundreds of bags lingering around in the garden

 

Piccies!

Hope's chrysanthemums are starting to turn a different colour which is unexpected but nice.


The potatoes are doing very well.



And the raised bed



Notice the white labels @Anthony Rogers There's broccolis at the left and then 2 square feet of spring onions at the front. Leeks and rocket at the back and I've just noticed my peas coming through. I've got my little pea frame up though. The packet says that they grow 75cm tall which is the height of that frame so lets see if it's big enough!

I'm happy to see that the bulbs I took from my grans garden have shed their leaves and started shooting! They'll be in flower soon enough!



The hydrangea is still alive. Leaves aren't droopy anymore. My gran told me that she was very surprised that it's alive. She told me that when she was trying the get it out of her garden she hacked it right back and tried to break it into pieces. It's had a hard life lately!



I've also seen these guys popping up where I've put some seeds down. I'm not sure if they're the seeds growing or weeds but it's only in that patch so I'm leaving them in just in case.



And my lettuces (lettuci?) have started peeking through! So cuuuute!



Meanwhile the broccolis are growing up. Especially this one!



Over to the wormery... they've been given their first meal and I've drained the leachate out of it. I've also mixed the cardboard and compost and then put a new layer of cardboard on top. If I remember right, they prefer to pop out of compost and take some food down. So If I had a layer of cardboard and then put food on top of that, they probably wouldn't be as tempted to eat.

 

I also went for a walk today (holy moly!) and I picked some blackberries.



1 kilo of free food! I made a blackberry crumble and it was very nice! Can't wait to harvest my own personal blackberries next year!

I've got a spider plant which Hope's granddad gave us and it was cramped in it's pot so I gave it a nice big pot and it's taken off like a rocket! In about 2 weeks it's grown 2 runners with about 10 plants on them. It looked strange because it looked all cooped up. I went to my mums today and she's got a spider plant that she bought for 10 pence. It was all dying and horrid looking but a little TLC and it's a gorgeous plant now! Anyway she's taken cuttings (which I've adopted) and I've come to the conclusion that my plant is a curly variety of spider plant! Who knew?!



And another Ant Plant which is no longer red, but growing strong. It's in full sun for several hours per day but it's clearly not getting enough sun to stay red. I was going to get some cacti for the window but I'm not sure about that now.



And the cutting I took from the park 10 miles away... also growing!

 

All looking really good Rad....I knew you were a gardener! Love the blackberries, infact I really like your post , you really have done very well you should be very pleased .
Now how's the new parkers catalogue???? Come on fess up what have you got your eye on?

 

Your not allowed to tease me @Radiation91, rating my post as funny isn't fair we want to know if you've had a sneaky peep in the catalogue or is it just sitting on the side teasing you!?

 

I certainly am a gardener I love pretty much everything about being in the garden!!

I've used about 2/3 of the blackberries in a crumble and it's all gone I ate about 3/4 of it in one sitting. It was REALLY nice! had it with some 0% fat yoghurt so it wasn't too unhealthy.

Parkers catalogue! I completely forgot about that. I've not ordered anything or got my eye on anything at the moment. I honestly think I've filled the garden when everything arrives

I really don't know if I've got the space for all these as well as the ones I've got waiting at my uncles but I can use the front garden as an emergency planting area.

There's no harm in browsing through the catalogue though eh? *goes to find catalogue*

 

Your post made me chuckle!
If I make a crumble I can't leave it alone until it's gone! I also have yoguart with mine....that makes it healthy doesn't it?!
No harm in browsing Rad, window shopping is always good!!
I did some shopping last weekend myself.....

And here's the really naughty one...

. These are the naughtiest hens I've ever had . They are full of life, so energetic, so funny & have managed to escape twice there's not an opportunity which they miss! The black one pictured above is the ring leader! I think she's going to be top hen!

 

@Beckie76 A couple of plants caught my eye...

9a Bellis Daisy Mixed
12g Iris golden zebra
14kl Heucherella
20f Pennisetum Redhead
29a Astilbe collection
38b Hydrangea red riding hood
39i firethorn
40h berberis helmond pillar
42a clematis aromatica
46i exochorda macrantha 'the bride'
49 gold raspberry, cranberry & blackcurrant
51i fig
55j lilium orange marmalade
58i naughty girl
60b calla aetheopica
66 fritillaria collection
68a anemone blanca white splendor

That ended up being a few more than "a couple"

Now look what you've done

Good to hear I'm not the only one who like yoghurt with stuff. Most have custard or ice cream. Nice to have a fellow yoghurter on board!



Look at the lickle chickies!!!!!

They've got a lovely set of feathers on them! What type of coop setup have you got? Forgive me if you've mentioned this on a thread elsewhere. I've been fairly absent from GC this week.

 

Updates!

Set up my gaming PC in the office so now I'm sat at a desk with dual screen! Bliss! Had to clean the PC first though. It was caked in dust... blurgh. After about 3 hours of trying to hack into hope's hard drive to transfer her files I wanted to get out into the garden. I've been praying for a couple of free hours on an evening but it didn't happen. So this weekend I was definitely going to get out there! I mowed the lawn, with a happy sense of accomplishment. The worms are doing great. The compost is also starting to look very nice



The bulbs are popping up to flower, after dying back earlier in the month



And my fleece came so I unraveled that



and covered my raised bed!



I just got the 6ft lengths of timber, drilled holes in them ready for the screws, countersunk them and then stapled the fleece to the other side. I wound the timber plank round and tightened up the fleece and then felt for the countersunk "dips" which let me know where to drill. Clever huh?

All in all, that's 20ft of timber and about 10% of the fleece I bought. Worked out quite cheap, and reusable (lets wait and see with that last point).

On the ends I've just got 2 planks and screwed them on keeping the fleece tight down. It's pretty much insect-tight now. The offcuts of fleece were put to good use...



I just kept wrapping her up in it. She was turning over the grass clippings into the compost heap.

The broccoli are doing well, at various stages too which is nice. the biggest one has leaves bigger than my hands and the stalk is about an inch in diameter. The rockets are ready to harvest I think and my peas are doing well too. Happy days!

You can also see the potatoes in the earlier photo. They're getting pretty tall now!

 

Wowie, somebody's been busy.

Say well done to Hope for looking after the compost heap. The raised bed looks good

So what have you been upto then you slave driver......