The arrival of The Greenhouse

I have finally downloaded the blogger app which, I hope, means more regular posts! (I haven't worked out how to put photos in the correct place yet so please excuse them all dumped at the bottom!)

A couple of months back we spent a weekend enacting Operation Aubergine. This was the code name for our mission to dismantle, transport, and rebuild a large glass greenhouse which we won on eBay for the bargain price of £100!

Here it is, in it's original home in North Kent...

We collected it in this van...

It took five hours to dismantle and get into the van. Next day, we had to out it back up! We put it in a sturdy base of sunken sleepers (oh my god are they heavy!)


All in all a knackering weekend but well worth it...

Produce 2011

As I didn't do any updates last year, you will have no idea how well our allotment has been getting on so this is a gallery-style update on things what we grew last year...

A basket of produce (this must have been autumn time)


My beautiful "Twilight" chillis (one of three varieties I grew - I have so many!)


Some strawbs in the fruit cage from early in the year


The onions, ready to come up


A GIANT carrot (after never having had much luck before, we outdid ourselves this year!)


A GIANT mooli! Slightly enexpected and we only managed to use some of them sadly...there's not that much you can do with a mooli it turns out!

Produce update

I haven't done an update on the food that we're getting from our garden for a while so I thought it was about time...

A couple of weeks ago we went down to the allotment, basket in hand, and had a good old harvest. The peas are pretty much spent so we picked the last of those (I think we've had over 4 months of peas, which is great considering I only successionally sowed twice and we had pea moth larvae). Some of the squash had also gone orange and hadn't grown in a few weeks so I decided to pick those. I'm glad I did because we now have a load more femal flowers fruiting, which is very exciting. We obviously had some courgettes (who doesn't?!) and the first of our tomatillos were ready so I picked some of those. I collected a jar of raspberries and I have also presented, harvest festival style, some of our chillis here. We've had over 15 chillis now from our 3 plants (and a good few to ripen yet) and 1 chilli is hot enough for a good kick in 4 portions of chilli!



To celebrate our bounty, I roasted a squash, some courgettes, tomatillos and a chilli (which was a bit too hot!) with some of my mum's garlic and some thyme form the garden and we had it for a few meals with couscous.



We are also continuing to get a continuous crop of tomatoes, although no new ones are growing now as you would expect. I picked a small punnet's worth today to add to a paella that I'm cooking for friends on Friday night. Despite it not being a traditional paella ingredient, I am going to see if I can hide some courgette in there!

1 more of our 52 meals

We managed to have another of our 52 meals to save the planet (from Home Farmer magazine - aiming to grow enough to make 1 meal a week from your own produce) last week - stuffed courgette (stuffed with breadcrumbs, nuts, tomatoes, courgettes flesh and cheese)with new potatoes and salad. All from the garden! (apart from some of the stuffing)



Very excitingly, we are also getting loads of ripe tomatoes. We have always suffered from Blight in the past and, as such, have always had to make do with green tomatoes but tihs year we have red! We have just had some for dinner with cheese and ham on toast - yummmm!

Wild flower meadow

For Christmas my sister, Katy, gave me a couple of packets of wild flowers, one of which I scattered down the back of the allotment where nothing else will grow and they've done remarkably well. Here is a selection:

No potato famine here!

This Sunday, Matt had his family visiting while I went off to a friend's wedding. Normally you would expect a family visit to involve tea, maybe a nice dinner or some wine. But oh no, Matt put them to work on the allotment, they had to earn their keep!

They filled the water butt (well needed!), pulled up the spent beans and dug up the early potatoes. The potatoes have suffered from the lack of water and too much heat somewhat and the first earlies were hit by frost so we were sure that we wouldn't get much of a crop. How wrong we were!

The first earlies, which looked very pathetic, produced a nice little crop of new potatoes (Chopin):



The second earlies were more impressive. The kestrels in particular, with their lovely purple splodges, produced some whoppers! One of them will provide us with a nice sized jacket potato to share!



The Condors have produced some lovely red potatoes, which I reckon will be good for fat chips. Yummmmmm!



We need to sort them and store them to make sure they don't go mouldy (we are a bit rubbish at storing produce normally!). Excitingly, we still have a bed of maincrops, which have lots of foliage, so fingers crossed they will produce some good sturdy potatoes for storing. We'll leave them in the ground for a bit longer and keep our fingers crossed that the Blight stays away.

Garden and Allotment News

As promised, I got myself organised and went down to the allotment to take a photo or our newly erected fruit cage, built entirely from pallets. if this doesn't keep the birds off, I don't know what will!



We also harvested our first proper veg last night. I was making Thai Green Curry so popped down and picked some peas a mangetout and they were yummy (although not as yummy as when the pods are full of peas!). Hopefully this early harvest along with all of the rain and sun we're getting will encourage plenty of peas to form:



On our jaunt out yesterday we bought a new addition to our plat family - this is Hoppy, he's a Hop! It's a Fuggles variety, famous for it's beer making qualities. Once we have got around to building our pergola in the garden he will climb up one side. We're not intending to use it for beer making (although maybe one day!) it's more orgnamental with a nod to traditional Kentish produce.



Our garden if now full of Iris of all shapes and sizes - the smaller ones being my favourites - but we have a few medium sized ones which are also lovely just popping up. I thought they were all purple until the heavy rain encouraged this little lady to pop our head out, isn't she lovely:



I have been talking for ages about wanting a Fig tree to give the garden some exciting texture and my mum and Nick took a cuttting from their plant. I wasn't sure how it would do and for the first couple of weeks didn't show much sign of life until I potted it up and this happened. Hurrah! This weather is perfect to encourage growth so hopefully he'll keep on growing:

So many things!

Well, where do I start. I think I've been rather tardy again and it's been a month since my last post so plenty of things to update on.

In the garden the flower bed is looking wonderful - full of colour with bees buzzing around all over the place. We have two giant Iris as well as a host of Alliums on one side of the bed (the purple side!) and an amazingly successful Lupin on the other side fighting for space with the Acer, which also looks lovely at the moment.




The girls are also doing well - we're getting three eggs most days and today they produced 4 just to impress our visitors from Basingstoke. They have taken a liking to lemon balm (which is fine by me because I dug it up last year and it refuses to go!) which they are all enjoying in this photo:



Now to the allotment and boy have we been busy. The broad beans are all in flower (and are now being attacked by black fly - grrr - which the ladybirds are doing their best to keep under control), as are the peas. The first early potatoes are a dissapointment but the second earlies and maincrop are doing well. We also has courgette, squash, cabbage, cauli, purple sprouting and calbrese, celery and a whole host of fruit (strawbs, rasps, red and blackcurrant, goosberry and tayberry). Much excitement this week when we had our first peas (one pod each!) and strawberry - we were so eager to eat them that I didn't get a photo but I do have these as a bit of a summary:






We've also been doing some building work on the plot with avengance - we've built ourselves a fruit cage. I foolishly discovered that I haven't yet taken a photo of it but needless to say it's great (!) - made entirely from pallets, we only had to buy the netting and the nails so we have a 5x2 metre fruit cage for only £40 - bargain! I will try to post a photo soon but my "parent blog" (te he) is slightly suicker than I am so you're likely to see it here more quickly. In the meantime though, I can show you this rather smart brassica cage that Matt made as well as him posing as "man about the allotment":

So much to say!

I've had a request for a blog update because I've been a bit tardy once again! Part of the reason that I haven't updated recently is because the garden and allotment is just so full or things to be done and these, along with working and trying to fit in a PhD as well as about a billion weddings and hen dos leaves very little time!

But I really can't complain because everything is looking so lovely with Spring well and truly here!

Here's a summary of the goings on in the garden. Now, I want you to start singing the tune from The Gallery as you look through these:

I love this plant but can't for the life of me remember what it's called. We got it last year from the Tonbridge garden fair, which has sadly been cancelled this year. This year it's so much bigger than last, it's just lovely:



The bed is getting nice and full as the perennials from last year come back to life again:

The 100 Allium bulbs that I planter are starting to flower, which is so exciting because I LOVE alliums:





Gavin The Apple is flowering nicely, although his sister Laxtons is being a bit rubbish and hasn't flowered yet. Last year Laxton provided all of our 2 apples so looks like Gavin is trying to prove he's up to the job!





Not to be out-done, the girls also wanted to say hello. Hythe does like to stand up as high as she can so that she can see what I'm up to, so here she is on her favourite perch. The other girls never get the chance to perch while she's around! We are having a mini-chicken crisis at the moment - we caught Hythe and Bell eating an egg the other day and, as our copy of Home Farmer which arrived today told us, this is a habit which is hard to beat, and they basically recommend culling any chickens that pick the habit up! We obviously won't be doing this so we are just going to keep an eye on the situation and play it by ear but we are more than a little concerned. I'll keep you posted.



Down on the allotment, the flowers are also blooming, with these lovely blue (and pink!) bells welcoming us in:




Our peas are starting to get nice and big and strong, so we're constructing a climbing frame for them! This hazel and wire structure is going to be strung up for the peas to clamber up:



We've also taken the risk and planted out some of our Spring/Summer cabbages (keeping some in the greenhouse, just in case!) and given them a pigeon proof cage!



We've also put two of our courgette plants out, under a little glass shelter. We visited them today after a chilly morning and they seem to be doing ok, but we also have some plants in the greenhouse at home to see how they get on:



Finally, the stuff that has been on the plot for a good while now is all doing well. the Broad Beans are looking strong:



...and the fruit is all doing brilliantly. This is one of the tonnes of strawberry plants that we have that originated from our 2 "parent" plants which we got about 4 years ago. They are all flowering like mad! This is why they call it The Garden of England!



Generally, the allotment is going really well. We have made all but one of the beds and have been digging like crazy to reduce the clay and increase the soil! We found a stash of top soil near the river and have been ferrying claggy clay out and nice top soil in. It's really making all the difference. I just can't wait until it all starts growing properly!