MudPud Garden
Or Weed Merrily perhaps....
The Cast.
Fran Age 5
Moo Age 4
Scruff Age 1
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Monday, June 30, 2003
Update...
Went out into the garden this evening and caught sight of a potato poking through the soil - ended up harvesting the lot - we have a huge pile - stacked high in a washing up bowl and we had some for tea - yummy. i am going to go out and buy a bag of tattys tomorrow - stick em in the pots and see what happens - i replanted a few plants with some baby potatoes hanging on the ends - see what happens. The last three pots i emptied had HUGE ants nests in the - very weird - all those eggs :~/
Also got a massive haul of radishes, spring onions and lettuce - very yummy :~)# posted by merry @ Monday, June 30, 2003
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Got back from muddlepuddle camp after a lovely week away in gorgeous sun. Good job we organised plant sitters or they would all be dead. We have had a real blow this week; the old lady this house was being rented out for has died and the house has been left to 5 separate people. It seems unlikely that they are going to want to keep it rented out somehow so, totally horribly, within a month of moving we are in limbo again. We have to wait until after the funeral for anymore news although the landlord is being really nice, but we may have to bend our will to buying it and hope for the best. I'm not really sure we can afford it though :~/
Still - in the mean time - the courgettes have produced a courgette - amazing! And we have lots of baby tomatoes - must do some tomato feed i think. The coriander is flowering beautifully, the mangetout is producing seed pods, we had another bumper sugar snap crop, all the herbs have flowers, the potatoes are coming on a treat, the shallots are "bulbing" and the onions swelling - although we do have the odd flower (hmmmmm..) Not sure about my broccoli - some has broccoli babies whle others have long yellow flowers. There are more gorgeous flowers in the garden which now just want to make me cry :~( cos i won't be here next year.
I'll go out and take photos tonight i think - might as well keep my chin up about it :~/
# posted by merry @ Sunday, June 29, 2003
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Got a HUGE crop of sugar snaps today - a box full!
And one baby tomato has appeared..... awwwwww... a newborn!# posted by merry @ Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Monday, June 16, 2003
Just a quick update really... the garden is growing like mad now - lots of the broccoli has little broccolis on it now, and we have planted out the leeks in front of them - hopefully they will do okay there. The sugar snaps gave our first really good crop - enough for everyone to have some for tea, and the mange tout is still doing really well too. The onions are okay - one seems to have a flower and we are steadily getting raddishes and lettuces now as well. Spring onions have been a total failure so far this - i shall have to make one final try. I'm going to do the courgettes and squashes this week and plant out all the winter veg - cos its mudpud camp next week and i need to leave everything going! Unfortunately i harvested some carrots too early and they were not very nice :~(
Slightly worryingly i saw bees taking bits of leaves down into the herb planted yesterday - i really flooded it and i hope that will have put them off - i don't really want a nest! :~/# posted by merry @ Monday, June 16, 2003
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
I just love our new garden; its really nice to have been able to turn this into a garden blog rather than a pot garden blog too!!!!!! Our latest thing we are proud of is our herb squares
which we made by planting out the hardiest herbs and surrounding them with white cobbles. Today we also planted out a herb planter (i found it in the shed, its grey plastic :~/) with all our own herbs, plus cinnamon basil, orange thyme, lemon thyme and chocolate peppermint, which smells exactly like a Frys Mint Chocolate bar!! Mmmmmmmmmm........
The courgette and squashes are coming on well - a bit behind everyone elses though - i need to plant them separately now really.
and the salad veg are donig much better (thats the triffids.. i mean the broccoli) at the front... woah there broccoli...
Here is Pud in front of the mange tout,
she is five so its a size guide - the sugar snaps are WAY over my head - if anyone knows how to encourage flowers lower on these i would appreciate it - our flowers are only at the top. And below is our first crop of mange tout...
The Nastursiums have found homes on the front step - mainly due to space - they are COVERED in black fly which is a real problem in the front garden - now i know this was the idea for when they were going to companion plant the tomatoes, but now it seems a shame... i need ideas....
Just for a smile, here is Button, our second rabbit in her new home - daddy converted a wardrobe and she lives on the bottom and Peter lives on the top! Its SUPER cool!!!!!!
Apart from that - we ( i say we, i mean HE!) have dug most of the veg patch now and the potaotes are living on it to keep the weeds down and get more sun; the shallots seem to be dying back - not sure they have "bulbed" really, nor the onions... hmmmmm....
I have a stack of seeds to plant to get going for autumn and winter veg too... argh.....
# posted by merry @ Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Saturday, June 07, 2003
Still not got round to those photos :~) - probably do them tomorrow as i have a load to be going on with- i also want to do a mini botany page for Muddlepuddle and i have some really nice pictures for it. However, today was a pretty good day garden wise so i thoguht i would add what i did and do photos tomorrow. We got more mange tout today - and very nice they were. The kids love being able to just pick and eat, they don't really make it into a meal. I am amazed by how much shorter these grow in terms of stalk height than the sugar snap peas - half the height really. Last ytear we only did mange tout so i was unprepared for the sugar snaps - today i put string up along the shed and moved them to there - i wound them all into the string and hopefully they will do well as its really sunny along that bit. The flowers only really start near the top - maybe now they will flower lower down too?
I also moved the tomatoes out of the green house as they had just got too big - and enormous amount of growth in 10 days. Not that many flowers so i am gonig to give them tomato feed now. i had to spend ages staking them as they have got huge and heavy. These are vine cherries, last years cherries were much shorter and slighter, although i guess they didn't get a greenhouse, but they cropped really well.The courgettes and squashes can take over the greenhouse now.
The big project of the day was the herb area. Pud and i went and bought two sacks of white cobbles and we marked out an area previously covered in mint into six sections. One holds what is left of the mint (the rest we dried) then we bought a rosemary, and planted the chervil, the sage (two measly seedlings grew!), the chives and the thyme. We also marked out the area in front of the broccoli and are gonig to try salad veg there. Its marked out because the kids run up and down a lot and hopefully it will keep them off it. Then max dug over a huge section of veg patch for me (bad back you know...) and we have moved the potato pots and the onions up there to get more sun. i am going to try and clear around the huge lavender bush tomorrow. I have some winter veg seeds to plant and a few more herbs to sort out as well.
One weird thing was the ant nest discovery. We have a lot of gold ants - never seen them before - and they had lifted the earth inside the climbing frame into a nest which we accidently disturbed by needing to use it! The carefully carried all the eggs away to safety - fascinating... no.. really!# posted by merry @ Saturday, June 07, 2003
Friday, June 06, 2003
I do have a load more photos to put on here - but i may have to do it tomorrow cos my brain isn't up to condensing the images right now. Anyway - after muttering about my peas, after seeing Ankes fab pea diary, i went out and found 20 or so mange tout hanging on the bush! Clearly none of us have been paying attention - we had them for a snack and they were lovely! We also had a lovely lettuce and rocket salad again and the mint we dried in the boiler room is done and gorgeous - the girls crushed it and we made a funnel to put it into a jar. Its fab to have grown and dried our own! Well, admittedly this mint was native to the garden but we have grown some too! Last night we had dill from the pots with our chicken - lovely lovely lovely!
A few of the radish seedlings have been slugged unfortunately but those are all so far. The tomatoes are flowering madly - yesterday i had to rescue a baby blackbird from the greenhouse - i gave her all morning to escape but had to catch her in the end. Judging by the yammering the mummy gave me you would have thought i tried to eat her! The courgettes are huge and need replanting and we suddenly have three squashes - hurrah! The broccoli seems to have got established now and needs watering less which is good - we have dug over more of that bit now to house the salad veg. Hopefully we can get it going in time for a winter crop of vegetables :~)# posted by merry @ Friday, June 06, 2003
