Special Delivery

I've been meaning to post since Wednesday but as usual work kept getting in the way every time I sat down at the computer!

Ok so I'm finally feeling a lot better after last weekends dodgy food incident (that'll learn me!) so on Wednesday I was very excited when Rich told me some long waited for parcels had arrived from the wonderful Victoriana Nursery's (ohhhh excitement!!), I've been working with Stephen and Serena designed some new logos and other bits and pieces for there lovely websites, and in return they had agreed to pay me in plants, a very excellent arrangement as I would only of spend any cash buying plants anyway!

I'm amazed I could control myself long enough to take pics of these...





ooooohopenitopenitopenit.....



Here are my 2 Cobnut Trees emerging from the amazingly compact parcel, some where in there is also an Olive Tree.



In the box all this wonderfulness was packed inside...



God it was all so exciting I had to have a little sit down and a cup of tea!

As it says in the helpful literature that Victoriana Nursurys send out with all their plants its best to get them planted as soon as possible, especially for the trees. So the rest of the afternoon was spent getting as much of this lot potted on or planted out as possible.

The Olive tree I planted in an old bin, this is mainly so it can be moved in the greenhouse to over winter, it also means if we even move house it can come with us!





The Cobnuts we planted down on the edge of the lawn along the fence, we're hoping to grow them into a hedge. I've wanted to put something productive in this area, we have a small lawn by our shed, there's not much there and I would quite like to dig it up and put veg beds in but Rich does like a nice bit of green to sit on on a sunny day so its stayed. However this year we are making a real effort to make the whole garden as productive as possible, to grow as much food as we possibly can, so we though the Cobnuts where a good compromise. We will have to keep on top of the yearly pruning though as left unchecked they can shoot up to 20ft (and I'm not climbing that just for some nuts!)

Please ignore the shapeless jumper I'm wearing, its another example of my gardening wardrobe!



So both Cobnuts are in and hopefully happy...



I had started growing my Onions this year from seeds, however they don't seem to be doing very well, I thing this is probably down to me (also my veg growing neighbor assures me growing onions from seeds is a right bugger, so I don't feel too bad!) so just to ensure we actually have some onions for autumn I caved in and asked Stephen to send us some onion plants (I feel like I'm cheating!!)



One of the other plants I had asked for was some Rambling Strawberries, we already have a Strawberry bed but are constantly fighting with the slugs to get any fruit, so we thought we'd try growing some in hanging baskets and see if this worked better...



We now have 2 baskets hanging by the front door, I'm really looking forward to walking out the house in the morning and picking a handful of Strawberries!



If this does work well I may do away with the Strawberry bed as the plants will be 3 years old next year and they recommend replacing after 3 years as productivity starts to drop off, also the bed takes up a lot of room for the fruit we manage to rescue from the slugs! We'll see how we go this year.

I have now finally got some Sweet Peas in, I LOVE Sweet Peas, they are one of my favorite summer flowers, my Nan use to grow them on her allotment so I always remember there being bunches of them around when I was little.
As the veg bed is getting a little crowded now I decided to grow them up on our sunny patio in front of the cottage, then I can just snip handfuls of them when I like and hopeful we'll get the fantastic smell too (Sweet Pea scent is the smell of summer for me!). They have been planted in to the little butlers sink we got a few months back.



Another little project we're trying to tackle here is the mini orchard (I say orchard its actually only has 5 fruit trees and 4 soft fruit bushes but I cant think what else to call it so mini orchard it is!) this section of the garden is right at the bottom of the 200 foot slope that's is our yard. It was part of the veg bed originally and also a general dumping ground, Rich spend most of the first summer we lived here flattening it out and haling great pills of rotten rubbish of the the recycling center, finally we planted the trees on it as it was too stony to grow veg in. Since then we've let the grasses grow back up around the trees and have been encouraging wild flowers to grow here, in summer this bit of the garden swarms with bees and butterflies.
One flower in particular that we have tried to encourage here is the lovely little Cowslip which is now endangered in the wild, gardeners have been asked to plant Cowslips where possible to try to boost numbers again. So I was really pleases when I discovered that Victoriana Nursery sold then as plug plants!



So 20 little plugs have gone into the mini orchard jointing then 5 or 6 plants we brought last year which are already beginning to spred.



The Cowslips where also joined by 3 Borage plants which should be another huge hit with the bees!



We also got 10 Foxgloves which are Rich's favorite flowers, they have gone in with the Cowslips and Borage, however they seem to be the only thing I forgot to take a picture off!

And last but not least we got these 5 Scented Geraniums for the patio...



As I think you will agree thats a hell of a lot of plants to get in too pretty small packages! So there you go that lot will buy two new logos for your website, anyone fancy trading for a chicken coop?!