the green gal

The joys of just doing stuff

It's been a little bit all work and no play around these parts recently so I decided today I would take a few hours out from making to do some nice stuff instead.

So, off I went and bought some pretty flowering bulbs and cut flowers. I've repotted the plants in various 'containers' I have around the house, I don't suppose tea pots and gravy boats are what Gardener's World would recommend but I think they look good!

(Have you spotted my fab new phone behind the primroses? I finally got my hands on a reproduction 1950s telephone with rotary dial and everything! So retro I love it.)

I've seen pics of fresh Spring flowers on several of my favourite blogs so decided I need to cheer up my home with bunches of tulips and narcissi too. And yes, that is a vintage thermos flask the narcissi are sitting in. 

Following my spot of gardening I had the urge to bake! So knocked up these cookies in just a jiffy. Think I need to watch my portion control, my dollops of cookie mixture were so big they merged into each other – I wouldn't have scored highly on the Great British Bake Off. 

So, along with the other not so interesting domestic activities, I've had a rather nice day. Back to the grind this evening though, at least I have pretty posies too look at while I work. Hope you've had a fab weekend too.

Five lovely things 4

Oops, I'm a bit late with this week's five lovely things post, I was distracted by a certain event which took place on my usual five lovely things posting day!

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And that event is at No1 – the gorgeously wonderful Royal Wedding. I don't think I need say much more, or show lots of photos, it exceeded everyone's expectations and I loved watching it with my friends at a Royal Wedding house party. The modern take on the traditional Royal Wedding with the vintage inspirations were just brilliant, sigh.

For No2 I want to say how touched I am that so many people entered my competition to win an extra-long length of paper bunting. I'm sorry I can't give you all a bit of free bunting love!

No3 is that my love of pinterest continues and inspired by the Royal Wedding I've been busy pinning pics of style icons from a bygone era. You can see the above board and more of my pins here.

At No4 is the fact I have a week off the day job so can spend days and days working on the green gables and hopefully soak up a little sunshine too. 

And at No5 is the joy of being in the garden planting veggies! As well as my first early potatoes I've also planted some mixed salad leaves, red onions, spring onions and leeks in our two veg beds. Our garden is v small so we don't have room for much more. On the shady side of the garden is our wildflower bed and that's sprung back into life in the last couple of weeks. We have lavender, forget-me-nots, marigolds, some other plants I've yet to identify, as well as some herbs – I've even got some chive flowers in bloom! And although it feels a bit weird I'm letting a small patch of nettles grow as I know they're really good for bees, butterflies and insects. I may even try making nettle tea…

In case you're interested, you can find out more about how to help butterflies and bring them into your garden here, and the same for bees here.

Five lovely things 3 + giveaway

It's Good Friday and Earth Day so I'm spreading the joy today – five lovely things and a little treat…

No1 goes to the plethora of bluebells. They seem to have all come into bloom at the same time and dog walks are even lovelier because of the purple carpets on show. I'd love to have bluebells in my garden…

This pic was snapped on our dog walk yesterday

No2 is for the gorgeous reaction I've had to my new star-shaped paper bunting! Especially love that mummies of little boys are extra pleased :)

For No3 I will be planting my seed potatoes in their old car tyre towers today. I know I've left it a bit late but we went from frosts to 20º heat so quickly I'm playing catch-up. Still need to decide what else I'm planting in the veg beds…

A previous year's potato stack, will be a while before this year's are as tall!

No4 goes to spending time with friends and family. Last weekend we had the hubbie's brother to stay and then had dinner with some friends, and this weekend we have more friends to stay. And seeing friends usually means consuming lots of extra tasty food which is always a good thing!

And No5 has to go to you – a length of the green gables bunting is up for grabs! The lucky winner can pick an extra long length of paper bunting from from my wildflower paper, coloured heart and coloured star ranges. That's 24 hearts or stars and five metres of bunting just for you!

Find the full range of paper bunting at the green gables

You can enter in several ways for more chances to win:
• sign up to the green gables newsletter
• leave a comment below
• follow me on twitter @thegreengal and retweet the giveaway
• become a fan on facebook and like the giveaway post

The giveaway closes on Thursday 28 April. Now, which bunting would you choose… Good luck! 

(If you can't wait to find out if you've won the giveaway and have to have your own piece of the green gables loveliness asap, you can take 20% of with the code FBWL20. And in case you missed it, I've added to my range of paper bunting with something for the romantics, find more here)

Potato-tastic

I'm so pleased with my crop of second early potatoes that I wanted to share them (or at least a pic of them) with you! It may not look much in the enormous bucket but I counted 38 usable potatoes, and a couple of teeny not so useful ones.

Last year's crop wasn't this good and as I didn't get to plant maincrop tubers due to the garden studio builders taking over the garden this is it for potato growing this year.

Rooting around in the soil-filled car tyres and finding the pale gems of potatoes waiting to be discovered is so rewarding! I can't tell you how much I love growing our own food and knowing exactly what went into the food on our plates. The money we save is a big help too.

And in case you fancied a giggle, without me knowing the hubbie took a picture of me picking a few red onions…

In case you're wondering why I'm in such an odd position, we had to put up a wire fence to keep the doggie out of the veg beds and so I have to straddle it, placing a foot in between rows every time I need to get in there! We'd just come back from walking said inquisitive dog in the fields, hence the heavy duty footwear.

In other areas, the strawberries are totally finished, tomatoes are growing but a few yellow and brown branches look ominous, a few of the red onions have lost their stalks, and we have more salad leaves and salad onions than can cope with!

How's your veg and fruit growing going?

A little garden party

At the weekend we had a few friends over for a little garden party. Our tiny garden scrubs up quite nicely with a few veggies and flowers growing, plus some bunting decoration, do you think?

Where I find gardening help

So, the sun is shining and the sound of garden centre tills is ringing in the air, it's time to get gardening! I've already made a start on some of my veggies – first and second early potatoes are in as well as red onions and a couple of rows of spring onions and leeks. This weekend I added the first row of salad leaves and also bought a couple of flowering plants to help attract bees and butterflies into the garden (and give them somewhere to feed). Following advice from the lovely chaps at Buckland Nurseries in Surrey, I went for Verbena and Veronica which will hopefully produce blue and pink flowers in a couple of months' time.

But enough about me, I want to take this opportunity to pass on some of the people, websites and books that I find hugely helpful in my growing attempts.

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Websites

growveg.com is a v clever website that lets you draw your plot, plan your crops (it automatically works out how much space you need for each), work out crop rotation and saves your plan so you can adjust and add to it over time. You can trial it for 30 days for free but then there is a fee of £15 for a year. Give it a go for the free period and see how useful you find it.

www.bbc.co.uk/gardening Whatever you need information on in life, the BBC can usually help and gardening is no exception. Whether it's veg growing or flowers or shrubs or anything soil related, this site is bound to provide you with some guidance.

Soil Association If you're interested in growing and eating organic food, then the Soil Association is the organisation for you. They are the sort of governing body of organic produce, not just food, and have a lot of info on eating healthily for yourself and the planet.

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People

The Alternative Kitchen Garden I found Emma as @akgpodcast on twitter and she's always been very patient giving me advice on my amateur gardening questions. Check out her podcasts on her site or look for a copy of her book.

Alys Flower is a newish presenter on Gardeners' World and, although she's not been a hit with some of the diehard fans, I think she's fab. She has a new show that started last week called The Edible Garden where she tries to grow as much of the food she eats as possible in her garden. Do take a look if you get a mo.

James Wong has also had a series on the BBC (I'm not on commission, honest, the Beeb just makes some really good programmes!), which I love, called Grow Your Own Drugs. It's not quite as debauched as it may sound, James tells viewers all about how to use plants to ease medical complaints. Even if you don't end up getting off the couch to make any of the potions, it's great telly and James' beaming enthusiasm is refreshingly cheering.

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People

Grow Organic is a Dorling Kindersley book, if you're familiar with this publishing house you'll know that every book they ever make is beautifully pictured and designed and has failsafe information. I find this book hugely useful as a relative novice and I'm sure the more experienced could make use of it too.

The New Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency is the bible of growing your own and going it alone. John Seymour was the founder of the self-sufficient lifestyle and from growing basic veg to having a smallholding, John is your man to help you.

Complete Guide to Gardening Season by Season This isn't a book for veg growers but for everything else growing in your outside space it's brilliant. By dividing up advice season by season it makes it easier to check what your garden needs to help bring out its beauty. 

So, those are just a few of the people and places that I find advice and inspiration in the gardening world. I hope they prove useful to you too. If you have any particular gardening gurus, I'd love to hear about them.

Breathe in the spring air

It's a beautiful day here, I hope the sun is shining where you are too. And, as is only fitting on a sunny spring day, I have been behaving in a most typically Sunday way.

1. Took the dog for a long walk in a nearby wood. Saw lots of little tufts of green leaves so hoping they'll turn into bluebells soon.

2. Went to the garden centre and bought lots of organic peat-free soil for our raised veggie beds. Last year we totally underestimated how much soil compresses down over time and our vegs didn't have enough soil to grow in. I've learnt my lesson, have thrown on lots more soil and will wait for it to settle down before sowing.

3. Planted my chitted first early seed potatoes in a low stack of tyres. This worked really well last year as you just keep adding soil and another tyre as the plants grow. Plus, it frees up the beds for other crops. I got my tyres from our local garage. The owner told me that all of their old tyres are recycled but growing potatoes in them sounded much more interesting! You can read here how I got on with my veggie endeavours last year.

4. Hung a load of washing outside on the line to dry, wind blown dry clothes are somehow lovelier than those which have air dried in the spare room.

5. Completely unrelated but I just spent a v enjoyable half hour photographing the reels of thread I bagged at my favourite antique/secondhand store yesterday. I already have wool that matches perfectly (no prizes for guessing my favourite colours) so snapped them too. I may not have photographed them outside in the spring air but the warm sunshine was flooding into the room making the light the best it's been for photo taking all year.

6. Will soon be off for another dog walk, then a read of the papers with a drink or two in the local pub, followed by a bowlful of homemade leek and potato soup at home. Pretty much a perfect Sunday! Hope your weekends have been equally or even more lovely.

What have you been doing with your time?

Well, in between working, digging myself out of the snow, crocheting on a train, watching Glee and My Dream Farm, and making my nephew's apron, I've made a few things and found some marvellous bargains:

I embroidered a birthday card for a dear friend…

…found this gorgeous clock hanging in a charity shop, and they sold it to me for a couple of quid…

 

…then I found this gorgeous bowl in my favourite colour in yet another charity shop and it was even more of a bargain. Can't quite decide whether to use it to store things or to plant some spring bulbs in it…

 
…made some more bunting from old shirts and lovely fabric my mum gave me…

 …found a funny website about making your life greener – Do The Green Thing, plus the easiest recipe in the world to make banana ice cream at Love Food Hate Waste, and tried this tasty recipe for Sausages and Mustard (veggie sausages of course) by Nigel Slater straight after watching him cook it on TV…

…used an old map to make a few envelopes and cover a peg (why a peg? no reason, just fancied using my new pot of decopatch glue and thought I'd pretty up a peg)…

…after spotting a few tulip bulbs shoots emerging from the soil in the garden I've been poring over seed catalogues trying to decide what to plant. Trouble is, even though last year I managed to squeeze two raised beds, two towers of tyres for potato growing, a window box for tomatoes, a hanging basket for strawberries and various pots for garlic and herbs into our little garden, I still want to grow more, and rescue a couple of chickens (hah!)…

… and that was how my first month of 2010 ended, wonder what's in store for us all in the next 11 months…!

Do you really need to print that?

Following my last post on recycling, What's in a number?, I've unearthed some more stats! I've never been the mathematical type so I'm not sure where these numerical urges are coming from, I think they just make interesting reading.

This time, paper gets the maths makeover… 

24 is the number of trees it takes to make one tonne of newspaper

70 per cent less energy is needed to recycle paper than it is to make new paper from virgin pulp

1 tree provides enough oxygen for three people to breathe

38 is the weight in kg of newspapers that the average Brit gets through in a year

10,000 trees are chopped down in China each year to make holiday cards

324 litres is used to make 1kg of paper

20 million acres of forest would be saved if half the world's paper was recycled

73 per cent less air pollution is produced by recycled paper than that made raw materials

115 billion sheets are printed on by personal computers each year

Right then, who fancies planting a tree?

Gardening lessons learned

Hello and welcome to my new look blog! It's a bit shinier looking than the last one and I've added a couple of extra things including some pics of things I have made. Does what it says on the tin. There's not a lot there yet but it will be added to in time! Hope you like it! BTW, anyone who had an RSS feed, I didn't manage to carry you over from my old blog so you might want to set that up again, sorry!

So, to gardening. As you will know I have ventured into the land of veggie gardening, with mixed results. Thought I'd give you an update as to how my little crops are doing and sum up what I've learned so far.

• Maincrop potatoes in their tower of tyres are still growing, had a few pretty flowers that my dog hasn't quite managed to jump up and bit off, little madam. They're hardy things as she REALLY wants to chomp her way through the leafiness.
• Onions are a bit sad, I'll come to that in a bit.
• Salad leaves were doing well till a few white cabbage butterflies laid their eggs and now the leaves look more like Swiss cheese than salad.
• Purple-sprouting broccoli are doing a great job sprouting enormous leaves but no actual broccoli. I'm reliably informed by veggie grower extraordinaire Emma Cooper (http://coopette.com) that they probably won't sprout till spring. 
• Peppers are growing v slowly, paint dries at lightning speed in comparison.
• Courgettes, only one plant left but that's got lots of little dinky courgettes growing on its very long stalk!
• Tomatoes, 43 of them to be precise, are okay, took some advice from Tuesday's Gardener's World and lopped off the top of one plant above the fifth truss (get me with my lingo). Two are turning orange so I have high hopes for the other 41.
• Strawberries served me very well but are now on their way out. Most of the leaves are red and the last two strawberries will be gobbled up tomorrow.
• Garlic is nearly done, stalks need to go a bit more yellow.
• Last three aren't technically veg but let's not be rigid!

So, what have I learned in first foray into gardening? A lot! To the experienced out there the below will seem pretty obvious but remember back to the first crops you planted, did you get it all right first time around? (Shush if you did.)

• A hanging basket is ideal for strawberries, no nasties get to them and they look pretty dangling in the air.
• When you fill a bed with compost, press it down because in time it will settle and look like you put in half the amount. Because I didn't do some bed squashing my onions don't have enough soil to grow in, hence their sad look.
• Purple-sprouting broccoli takes up a lot of space. I mean a lot. Courgette plant kind of amount. A lot.
• You have got to cover up salad leaves. Otherwise they will get eaten by the wildlife. For definite. (Any advice on the best and most practical way to do this gladly received.)
• Tomatoes look good, and grow well, in a window box, just be sure to fill it to the brim with soil.
• Growing potatoes in tyres works! Okay I haven't dug them up yet but look at the piccie, whatever's going on in there has to be good!
• You really do use a lot less water with a watering can rather than the hose.
• Growing your own veggies is fab. It's rewarding, it's cheap, it's interesting, it benefits you and your environment (local and global), you learn loads plus you get to eat the efforts of your labour. 
• People who don't garden are easily impressed with anything you have managed to grow. Or I have polite friends.
• Gardening books are inspirational (see below) but you can't beat advice from real-life humans too (thanks bruv!).

On the subject of tasty gardening books, I'm going to give you the chance to win a gardening book, hurray! Grow Organic is a sumptuous DK book (see here for an Amazon link http://good.ly/a82bt) and I shall give away a copy to a randomly selected person who comments on this post before midnight (UK time) Wednesday 12 August.