the green gal

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.

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?

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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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.

Nature at its best

What glorious weather we've been enjoying! I hope it's been sunny where you are too.

This weekend my hubbie, doggie and I went to visit my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew. Having spent a lovely afternoon at their allotment I was inspired to get cracking on my own veggies. So, I have now planted my second early potatoes in their stack of tyres, four rows of red onions, a row of spring onions and a row of leeks. I'll add more rows of spring onions and leeks in the next few weeks so we can enjoy our crops over a longer period of time, plus a few other veggies like beans, tomatoes and salad leaves, and hopefully some strawberries too.

Last year I had moderate success with my crops so this year I'm hoping to do better. I think I've learnt from the mistakes I made last year, we'll have to just wait and see how I get on! For those of you who are interested I use organic peat-free compost and don't use any chemicals to help things grow. If nature and I can't do it on our own, it isn't worth doing! If you're interested in finding out more about organic growing, take a look at the Soil Association's website.

If you've never tried growing your own food I urge you to have a go. There's something quite soothing about handling soil, planting seeds, watering and tending to them. And of course eating the products of your hard work is hugely rewarding. You don't need huge amounts of space (I don't), a windowbox is enough to grow salad leaves or herbs, most things can be grown in pots and, as I've demonstrated, potatoes can be grown in old car tyres! Growing your own food costs a lot less than buying it from the supermarket, plus you know exactly where your meal has come from.

The other great thing about gardening is that it gets you out in the fresh air and (hopefully) the sunshine. Studies have shown that being in nature lifts the spirits and makes people feel happier. So, now nature is well into its stride with flowers blooming, bees buzzing and butterflies swooping about all over the place, I thought I'd give your eyeballs a treat with some images of nature doing what it does best…

1. Parade Magazine, Nature Conservancy Contest Winner, 2. Fields near home, 3. Nature pearls, 4. Blossom close-up, 5. Conch (or Whelk) Shell- Nantucket, 6. Spring Lamb, Spring Flowers

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.

How does my garden grow?

It's been a while since I planted my veggies and it's going well-ish! 

I'll start with the bad news. The courgette plants. I had three, I now have one. Having just watched River Cottage and listened to Hugh saying you mustn't water the leaves because they'll get burnt, I think I may have found my problem. I try to aim at the base, but sometimes there's a bit of splashing, you know how it is. I'll be more careful with my remaining plant. My onions have also been a bit odd, some are flourishing, others just popped out of the soil looking mouldy! Not sure what went on there.

Potatoes in their tyres are doing well and are of huge interest to my neighbour's young son. The earlies have been in for more than 12 weeks now so is it not time to harvest them yet? My allotment-holding brother and Carol Klein's ace book Grow Your Own Veg say I have to wait for them to flower or turn yellow and fall over. No sign of either happening yet. I might strike out on my own and have a dig around in a week's time, just for the hell of it.

My purple-sprouting broccoli plants are getting v bushy (no sign of the actual broccoli yet), the pepper plants are growing v slowly but there are teeny little pepper buds which excites me enormously. 

But the prize for growing most impressively, and usefully, goes to my salad leaves. I had my second salad this week made entirely of my homegrown leaves, so satisfying! The tomato plants are about two feet tall now and have recently sprouted flowers so hopefully I'll have my own little tomatoes to go in the salad too soon. 

On a fruity note, I ate my first strawberry from my hanging basket today – it was so tasty and smelt incredible, definitely not like shop bought. 

More are turning pink so I might average a strawberry every couple of days!

Having worried about how my little veggies were going to grow, I feel a smidgen more relaxed. My sole attempt at companion planting was marigolds and on the whole they seem to be doing the job. I think keeping the strawberries up high in a basket has helped keep some of the nasties away from them. However, the hosta is being eaten alive and my attempt to surround the base in pine cones was thwarted by my puppy, who thinks they're her chew toys. 

So far so good, we'll see what happens in the next thrilling installment of my veg patch...