Another off topic post

But here is a photo of my 2 year old son sporting the scarf I've just finished knitting for him today!

TWAG - The War Against Gastropods

The courgette plants are looking quite a sorry state at the moment as, despite my best efforts, have been all but devoured by slugs. I am hoping that they will recover, although this has put their growth back by quite a bit there is still *some* green above ground.

I have a plan however! Currently the plants are being protected by rings of coins or eggshells. The coins are proving to be a far superior deterrent. Thus I have taken the decision to purchase something a little more permanent in the form of slug rings. These are basically rings of copper that will repel even the most persistant of slug or snail without harming them or poisoning the soil, or any other wildlife, which also means it's child friendly too! Hopefully they will arrive tomorrow so I can reduce my nightly partrols and slug flinging activities!



In other good news everything in the greenhouse is still alive and growing, although I need to plant things on very soon, unless I want the smallest carrots and spring onions in the world!

Slightly off-topic but thought I would share

Here is a photo of my daughter Elin, just after she got her fringe cut!

Blooming Heck!

Ok so we've had many days of rain, some thunder, some more rain and even a bit of sunshine! As you can see this has had the wonderous effect of making all the flowers that were very small to suddenly erupt and reach for the sky! I have netted and eggshelled my courgette plants as something keeps eating their leaves but I'm not sure what. The little pot full of water was supposed to contain beer to drown any rouge slugs, but the heavens opened before I had a chance to fill it.

My little tomato plant is still alive and the fruit fly invasion appears to have subsided on it's own. However the tomatoes don't appear to be ripening and are staying green. I'm hoping all it needs is more sunlight and some food, which I can do tonight or tomorrow.

Also the seeds in my greenhouse have started to come up, I now have little spinach, spring onion and carrot seedlings to go with my radishes, lavender seedlings and strawberry plant!

Damn more flipping rain. Good for plants, bad for me. Guess I must be a fair weather gardener!

To Do:

Feed plants in garden and greenhouse
Spray tomato plant
Repot mint plants

Quick update before I head off to bed. Well it's good and bad news in my little garden today. Good news is it's been raining all day, which can only be a good thing! Also most of my courgette plants are still going strong. I say most, as a few have been succumbed to some beastie or other (I suspect slug) taking one or five bites out of a few of the seedlings. I've put a net over the plants and plan to put pots of beer out tomorrow if I get the time.

Also my little tomato plant has become infested with fruit flies that have migrated over from the compost bin. I am loathed to do it, but they will need a spray tomorrow and probably later in the week too to try to keep the numbers down. I just hope it doesn't affect the tomatoes too much. I have yet to dig another plot for the lettuce, partly due to lack of time and also I didn't fancy trying to shift clay in the rain! Project for a drier/sunny day I think.

Right, here goes, lets see if I can actually keep a blog going for longer than a few posts!

I have decided to grow vegetables and herbs in my little back garden for the simple reason that I can and why not! Also where I will be growing is mostly clay, rocks and hardcore, so I'm hoping that by planting and growing seeds in it, and also replacing the clay with compost as I go, will help improve the soil. A lot of the it will be made up as I go along, with some help from the internet! I will try to update this blog regularly and report on the ups and downs of growing food for the very first time!

My little garden is more like a patio with a couple of planting areas, the largest of which is at the bottom of the garden and is full of plants. That area is aprroximately 14ft wide by 5 ft deep. This area is pretty much finished, but there's always tweaking that can be done. It's pretty much left alone though, as it's full of flowers that bees love and as I have a slight bee phobia, I tend to avoid it if I can. That area is also where we keep our compost bin, which is currently inundated with fruit flies and bluebottles, so if anyone who finds this blog have any tips for keeping them away from the house, I'd love to hear them!

The second area, which is the one I am currently using, is a smaller, squarer patch situated in the middle-back area of the patio. This area is approximately 8ft by 6ft and is where the really awful clay and hardcore is located. You can see it in the photo above, with a little patch full of courgette seedlings, which hopefully won't get eaten before i've had a chance to harvest them! I also have lavender plants in the more shady corner of the area and cherry tomato plants (bought from Focus, yes I cheated) in the more sunny corner. With any luck I shall be removing another 40 litres of clay and stones soon and putting in some more compost so that I can grow lettuces, among other things.

Furthermore, I have just acquired from eBay a mini greenhouse that currently has carrot, spinach, spring onion and lavender seeds germinating, and radish seedlings that have just come up in the last week. I've also put my strawberry plant in there, from last year. This hardy little thing survived as a tiny plant in a tiny pot and produced a whopping one strawberry last year! So hopefully now it's been repotted and put in a more favourable location it should be a lot happier. It's already sprouted new leaves, so with any luck it should produce more fruit than last year!

The spinach seeds have been planted into origami newspaper pots, as shown here . They're great as once the plants have grown and need to be replanted, you can keep them in the pots and the decomposing paper adds nutrients to the soil.

I think that's enough waffling for now, hopefully I will update this blog often and let you know how I'm getting on!