Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

The latest article for the Romford Recorder was released last week and you can read it below. I deal with most of what has been happening on the plot in the article other than mentioning the ongoing battle with weeds! I wondered if the very cold snap we had in winter would have killed many weed seeds but going by my plot that has not been the case; honestly I think I have more weeds than ever. I can only assume this is down to the very dull and wet spring we have had followed by the relatively nice conditions of late encouraging growth.  One job I have undertaken recently not mentioned in the newspaper editorial is to take up the old garden path that I had, put down by my Father many moons ago, and create a new Barbecue Patio halfway down the garden. I have re-used the most of the slabs taken up from the path to create the Barbecue  Patio so the only cost was for sand and cement and a fair amount of hard graft! The turf lifted to allow the patio to be laid was used to fill in the rathe

I have been busy in the Greenhouse of late. The soil in the Greenhouse works harder than perhaps any other soil on my patch and I do from time to time take some out of the beds and replace with new compost; I pretty much exclusively grow Tomatoes in the Greenhouse and they are greedy plants. A job I do every year is replenish the soil. I have added a good helping of 'pot ash', actually ash I have saved from the Chimenea and Barbecue, Chicken Manure pellets and a good sprinkling of Blood, Fish and Bone. Each is added in turn and dug in adding all sorts of nutrients back into the soil. I leave for a week or so and then the Tomato seedlings are planted into their final growing places.  Suttons tempted me in with an email offer recently and I have another five  Tower Lily Pretty Woman  bulbs on their way to me as I write. It is a bit late to be planting Lily bulbs, those already in the White Border are around a foot tall, but at the special price of £2.99 for the five I could not r

  I have talked before about how you simply  can’t  rush Mother Nature and quite a lot on my plot is  somewhat behind  where I would expect it  to be by late April. In years gone by  I  have had Runner Beans and Peas quite well  established  on the Vegetable Patch by late March but this year  I  only got the  seedlings  planted out  over the Easter weekend ,  the cold nights dragging on into April . Law of the sod of course meant no sooner were the young seedlings out than we had a hail storm the next day and now, less than a week later, we have a yellow weather earning for high winds! The poor seedings are looking a bit bedraggled already but all being well will survive but the wind is whipping across the garden as I write; the bamboo screening down one side of the garden may well take off at some point!  The Cherry Tree in my garden is often in bloom in early  April  but the buds  have  remained fir mly shut  a nd  even now  the y  are only just beginning to  show signs of  open ing

All sorts of trials and tribulations await around every corner for us gardeners as I noted the other morning taking a stroll down the garden to the Greenhouse. The Leeks I sowed several weeks ago have been living quite happily in a large log store that I use at the end of the garden for sheltering plants and storing pots. Now I don't know if it was the very windy weather we have been experiencing or, most likely, and inquisitive Fox or local Cat, but the trough was found on the floor in front of the table on which it was sat with most of the contents deposited on the ground. Disaster! I have been able to save a few of the seedlings which I have potted on and hopefully I will have at least a few Leeks, if not as many as planned, to plant out in a few weeks time.................. It really has been a crazy winter with some quite extreme conditions changing from one week to the next. I have taken a lookback though some old notes from my time owning an allotment and I had a number of s

With the weather really rather nice, and a cheeky day off from work having been booked, I was able to get on and do some jobs on the Vegetable Patch last Friday. First job was to harvest some Leeks, Parsnips and Carrots that have been sitting happily in the ground despite the inclement weather of the last few weeks. I have mentioned before how impressed I have been with the Eskimo Carrots this year and they certainly lived up to their name, none the worst as they are for having been under about 4 inches of snow at one point.  The main job undertaken on the plot was hammering in a number of six-foot tree stakes that I have purchased  to be used as fence posts around the Vegetable Plot holding up the chicken wire fencing. This should, all being well, make the ' fencing ' considerably more stable than it was and insure visiting squirrels , cats, foxes and pet dogs of friends and family are unable to get on the patch and have a good dig around! Having had quite  the workout securin