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?!

Poorly!

Sorry for the lack of posts, usually I have a nice big one after a weekend of sunshine and ordering Rich about. I was really looking forward to Sunday, I had a whole day of planting planned however whatever it was I eat on Saturday night decided that wasn't to be. I'm now into my 3rd day of feel awful, although I'm slightly better than I was on Sunday which ended up with me lying on the sofa trying not to throw up and shivering with 2 blankets and the fire going full blast! God I hate being poorly, it doesn't happen very often so I always think I'm dieing when it does!

Saturday was a better day (before I ate the dubious stew in the evening) we had a few months back been given a load of logs by a lovely lady who had had some branches from one of her trees come down. She was looking to have the rest of the tree felled as it was unsafe and had said at the time we could come and collect as much as we wanted. Anyway Saturday was the day so we went to load up our trusty little car (which is brilliant but we are seriously considering trading it in for some sort of pick-up), we ended up getting 2 car fulls of very large logs which just needed cutting.



Rich spent most of the rest of the day sawing and chopping, and I stacked the result in the new wood shelter, we where going well until the handle on our axe broke! I feel another trip to the DIY shop coming on...

Anyway as you can see we now have enough wood to last us through the winter and we haven't chopped all the logs yet!



By Sunday morning I was feeling pretty dreadful but dragged myself out to the veg patch hoping the fresh air would stop me feeling sick, I managed to get the Pea wigwams up in the prepared Pea bed.



I got about half way though planting the Peas when I had to give in and crawl back to the house in defeat, but the lovely Rich finished planting them out for me, I need to start some more off in the greenhouse but that will have to wait will I can stand to smell of compost again!



Rich made a nice job of it didn't he!



So there we are, hopefully a better post after next weekend as I'm expecting a delivery of plants and I shall be out planting them even if I do feel like death!!

Book Lust

I have just made the mistake of looking about on Amazon while waiting for paint to dry (god how exciting is my life!) Amazon is never a good idea, especially not when you have a credit card about your person. However I have managed to resist for today, but these are what I shall be lusting after and dropping hints about before my Birthday in May!







and this last one isn't really to do with gardening but its recycling and finding new uses for old stuff, very Shabby Chic (or in the case or our house, Shitty Chic!)



Mmmm books!

Tiles, Seedlings & Bunting

Phew what a busy week I've just had, sorry for the little blog break but I had a week in Shropshire with Mum & Dad doing some much need organizing and decision making about the wedding, it all seems to be coming together well and Rich and I are stating to get pretty excited about it now!

While I was away Rich was yet again doing more tile laying in our cottage, you may remember that we (and by that I mean Rich!) laid our quarry tile floor in the living room, we had always intended to do the whole ground floor of the cottage but as its very small and Rich's time is limited we are having to do one room at a time. Last week was the turn of the dinning room/my work room/hall/room thats too damn small to do much with! Once again Rich was helped out by his Dad who gave up a weeks holiday to put himself through mild physical torture on his knees on a cold concrete floor (thanks Rick!!) and the result as you can see is beautiful!



Rich has also been watering my seedlings in the greenhouse for me, they seem huge after not seeing them for so long, the Peas are going really well, I'm hoping to plant then out this weekend (hopefully the frost will keep off!)



The Onions are also doing really well, I need to get some more on the go this week, but its quite exciting growing them from seed!



My Tomatoes have also at long last made an appearance, helped along by the warm weather at the beginning of last week.



I'm hoping to get a few hours in the garden some time this week so I will have a better up date on whats happening.

My next little project (in between working on artwork, stuff for my shop, the garden and my part time job!) is making stuff for the wedding, Mum and I managed to get some really lovely fabric last week, including some beautiful old hand stitched linen place mat's from a charity shop (for the grand total of £3.30!) we'll be using these to stand kilner jars full of wild flowers on at the reception.



And as buying ready made bunting is so exspensive I'm going to try making my own...



I have a feeling this week is going to be just as busy!

Happy Birthday!

Two Birthday s actually, I have just realized that my little blog was a year old on the 2nd of March! so a slightly belated Blog Birthday to me, which brings me on the the more important Birthday of the two.

Happy Birthday to my lovely Dad who is 60 today! I have mentioned my Dad on here before so I won't go on to much (but just enough to make him feel embarrassed!) sufficed to say he's had a very crap year, there's nothing like a load of medical professions killing off your bone marrow then pumping you full of drugs to really put a dampener on your day, put he has come through it all wonderfully (in fact we recons he has more hair now its grown back than he had before, score!)

So this is just to say we are all so proud of you Dad, we weren't ready to do without our silly old bear just yet!

Sun At Last!

Mmmm lovely sun shine, how I've missed you! Its warm enough to walk to work without a coat at the moment! Its been so nice to stroll down to the greenhouse after breakfast and have a look at how the seedlings are getting on. Their doing pretty well actually, even the onions have finally made an appearance!



The Garlic is also rampaging away in its sink...



And as the weathers improved a bit I got some of my Victoriana Nursery's Spinach seeds planted, they are also in one of our freecycled sinks!



As the Pea seedlings are coming on so fast I thought I would take the opportunity to get the pea bed ready for them. I'm using the same bed as last year, I know your supposed to rotate the beds to stop problem build ups in the soil but the end bed is so handy for peas as it narrower that the others and I can get at them from both sides.
For the last 2 years I have used the method of burying a layer of corrugated cardboard about 2 foot down to act as a sponge layer, peas really don't like to dry out so this should mean that the card retains any moisture in the soil so the peas roots can borrow down and get at it. Now in theory this works fanatically well, unfortunately the last 2 years have been a total washout as far at the summer was concerned, so dried out Peas really haven't been an issue! But I believe firmly in forward planning and every man and his dog recons this year will be a scorch so here I am yet again digging a bloody big hole...



Then lining it with cardboard, a layer of wood ash from our stove (quite a big layer, I really must empty it more often!) and a layer of worm filled compost from one of our bins...



Then the fun job of back filling it, my thighs are still aching 3 days later!



Hopefully all this effort will give the Peas and Squash the best possible conditions to give us loads of lovely veg this summer.

I love this time of year, so many things are sprouting and showing tiny bits of green, our All Gold Raspberries are just starting to shoot, they where a huge success last year apart from it being slightly too wet for them meaning quite a few of the fruits went moldy before they had even ripened.



So generally the whole garden is looking pretty promising right now!



Apart from all the fruit and veg we grow I try to grow as many flowers as possible, not just because they look nice but to attract the insects, especially the Bees which seem to be having a very tough time of late. I like to try and grow flowers for cutting as well, money being so tight means cut flowers from a shop are an unaffordable luxury right now, so to make sure I can have flowers over the summer I'll be planting my favourite Sweet Peas in tubs on the patio by the front door.
I managed to buy another old galvanized tub the other week for a mere £3, so Rich kindly drilled some holes in it for me...



then it was filled with wild flower seeds and will hopefully also have the Sweet Peas planted in it but the end of the month.



I put it next to the pond where it should end up covered in Dragonflies like the pots I had there last year did. I already have my Pansies planted up which the Bees seem to like.



So a pretty productive day Sunday, its so nice just to be out a working in the garden again. Who needs foreign holidays when you have all this on your door step...

First Spuds In!

Woohoo, the first spuds of the year are in, they have been sat chitting on my front room window sill for a month now, and looked ready to go to work.



So the beds got a good dig over yesterday and a nice layer on compost to help them along. I am putting the spuds in the bed that had the onions in last year, I don't have a lot of room for rotating as I only have 3 small beds (and the peas will be going into the same one again!), hopefully they'll be happy here.





Its very satisfying to finally be digging again! I also saw the first signs of life in little pots in the greenhouse this weekend, my little peas are stating to pock their way though! I can't wait to be eating fresh peas this spring!



The Garlic I planted at Christmas is also on its way...



...and here are further signs of the approaching season.



we suddenly have millions of purple crocuses every where, I even spotted tiny green shots on my Grape and Raspberries!!!

I will have to go and have a sit down, this is all to exciting!