My first week

My first week of gardening has been eventful to say the least.  I had a vegetable theif!  But onto that later on.

A couple of days after planting my peas, salad rocket, rosemary and thyme, I planted out some of my carrots, garlic and broccoli plants.  Now being a true rookie I followed the instructions on the little label things about spacing the little plants out - how important is this?  I can understand plants need space to root and gather the nutrients so you don't want to plant them too close together, but I am fast running out of space.  So advice on spacing my dear readers would be awesome.  Anyway the OCD in me dictated that my plants need to be in nice straight rows.  So I improvised, not having any gardening string, and tied what I did have around two bamboo poles -knitting yarn!

I planted out my carrots as per instructions on the label, about 3" apart.  Then I had a little visitor have a good nose around.  My little sausage dog Tess jumped straight up onto the planter uninvited to see what the heck was in her garden!

Frank sunbathing on a cushion and fleece whilst
I work away on my plants

It got the OK from her though the cheeky monkey.  I suppose at this point I should share with you that I have five doggies, who often help me whilst I'm out in the garden.

Planter #1

Anyway back to the gardening.  After turfing the sausage off my planter I then planted up my garlic plants of which I had four and my broccoli plants.  Now this is why I ask how important spacing is.  According to my labels the broccoli plants need to be about 60cm apart.  This would have meant probably only two plants in a row in my planter.  Now these things aint cheap people!  So I ignored the instructions and put three in.  They're probably only about 45cm apart but ho hum.  I also put the labels by each row so I know which plant is which.  I don't really know why because they are quite easy to distinguish from one another, but it felt like the thing to do.

Then it was on to my potatoes.  I have 10 tubers or whatever you call them so have decided to stagger my planting to get a more spread out harvest.  Because seriously how many potatoes can you eat at one time!  So I will wait about a month until I plant the next tub of potatoes so we have home grown potatoes for longer :).  These are a 'rocket' variety.  Don't really know what that means but I read somewhere they were an easy variety to grow and tasted good.  Of course I covered over my little potatoes and watered them in nicely.

Now do you remember last post I mentioned that I had grown herbs in the past with varied results.  Well this is the last lot of herbs that we attempted to grow.

I'm not too sure if they are dead or not, they look it.  I suppose time will tell whether they regrow this spring or not.  But this is what I am hoping to avoid with my new hobby!  Lots of dead looking twigs!  So I am making extra sure that each night I tuck my plants up nice and warmly so the frost doesn't get them.   I've also had problems with slugs on my plants - they love a nice courgette plant they do - so any tips on how to protect my plants with natural remedies would be most appreciated.  I say natural remedies as I want to keep my veggies and fruit organic.  Also being inspired by the Land Girls, one would have thought that in the 1940s all these modern pest sprays ect would not have been around, and I want to keep things as close to my inspiration as possible.

Anyway there is one pest that I can't control and that is the lesser spotted Arthur sausage.  Not long after the first dog incident where everything was thoroughly checked over, another hound was spotted on top of the planter and chased off by my dad.  He hadn't seen anything but I know that dog better and thought I should check to make sure he hadn't weed on them or anything.  This was all that was left of one of my three broccoli plants.

Complete with chomp marks.  Needless to say the planter has been dog proofed, try getting into this doggie!

The offender - Arthur sausage

He may look cute people, but I assure you his is most evil!

Next week I will be tackling my second planter, planting out the rest of the leftover carrots and broccoli as well as the onions and a few other bits and bobs.  I also went a bit mad with packets of seeds as I got all enthusiastic, so will have a go at growing a few veggies from seed.  I also discovered some exotic herbs that I got as a birthday prezzie from my sister.  They are a cocktail herb kit that is intended for you to grow the ingredients that are then used in various weird and wonderful cocktails.  Right up my street!  So I look forward to that, especially growing a 'Cucamelon' whatever the heck that is!

Until next time, happy gardening!

Garden Get-up

I'm not going to lie.  My foray into gardening has been mainly about the cute Land Girl outfits I can wear.  So I have gathered some images on Pinterest that inspired me.  I did look at gardening type things too I promise - I'm not totally shallow ;).  Click the thingy below to go to my Pinterest page and see all the inspirational fashion, style, gardening and plant inspiration that is helping me to keep enthused about growing my little veggie and fruit patch.

Follow 's board Land Girls on Pinterest.

My favourite image has to be this one:

It is a knitting pattern from Debbie Bliss and would be a perfect knit for me to wear under my gardening dungerees.  The pattern comes in a booklet of Land Girl inspired knits and I am yet to find just this sweater pattern so I may have to buy the whole booklet.  I have learnt from my foray into gardening that one can get quite warm whilst working away, but at this time of year it is too chilly to go completely jumperless (I now understand those god awful gillets that women of a certain age wear - they are actually quite practical for the garden!), so a short sleeve little sweater like this will be a perfect accompaniment to my gardening wardrobe.

Anyway what inspires you to get gardening?  Perhaps a nice sunny day?  Or are you a big girl like me and love the fashions?

Until next time, happy gardening! 

In The Beginning

My bounty

Well I don't know if it's just the nice spring weather today, or because I have been watching my Land Girl DVD's recently, but I have been inspired to create a veggie, herb and fruit garden!  I'm not sure how this new hobby is going to progress, but I am starting it with much enthusiasm and have decided to plot my progress through this blog.

Day 1 of new hobby

I love the idea of getting fresh veggies and fruit straight from my garden.  When my sister and I were little girls we grew lots of veg in our back garden.  We grew courgettes/marrows, raspberries, runner beans and I think a few pumpkins here and there.  We had the good fortune of growing up with a big old house behind our garden, which had a fabulous fruit and veg patch with huge bounties of fresh produce - I suppose that is what inspired us.  But time and age came upon us and I suppose we must have grown out of that phase.  The big old house was knocked down and five houses built to replace them.  In the house directly behind ours three old fruit trees were kept, so we did occasionally accidentally knock a few plums off into our hands.  In the last 10 years or so I have had countless pots of herbs which some have died and some have stuck around for a few years before eventually succumbing to the slugs or frost.  So I have sort of kept my interest in growing my own produce, but not had the time or inclination to properly dedicate to keeping them alive.

I am a keen jammer so in the past 5 years or so have collected apples, blackberries and plums from anyone who will let me.  Why is it that people have fruit trees and don't pick or eat the fruit?  The past couple of years our neighbours fruit trees haven't yeilded much as they don't maintain their trees, so last summer we bought a couple of variety of apples and a plum tree.  So I have had a sort of interest of recent.  We also still have our raspberry plants from when I was little.  They grow like weeds in our garden and every year we get hundreds and hundreds of juicy ripe raspberries to eat.  Last year we had so many there are still some in the freezer!

My sort of interest in growing my own fruit and veg has also been stirred by my recent purchase of the BBC Land Girls series on DVD.  I completely missed out on seeing them on the telly but thought I would treat myself to the whole 3 series as I love the wartime fashions and hair and beauty, so thought they would be a nice series to watch whilst working (I work from home on my own business www.bettybluesloungerie.com).  I was right, they were a lovely nostalgic series and I loved the outfits instantly, even if they aren't so historically accurate.  So much so I bought these pair of dungarees so I could pretend to be a land girl myself.

Tara Starlet Loveheart Dungarees £95

I bought them in the dark blue colour though not in the red as pictured above.  But anyway, when I put them on - I'm not sure what came over me - but I thought wouldn't it be great if I had my own veggie patch so I could wear my land girl style outfits and have lots of fresh yummy food. (I have to mention my other passion is food - I love cooking and EATING!).  So here I am having freshly come back from the garden center with lots of new plants and gardening paraphernalia, how middle aged am I!

I thought doing a blog would a) keep me motivated to actually look after my veggies, and b) be a great way for me to track the progress and failures/successes of my plot.  Like any good hobbiest, my first port of call was to google the best plants to grow in the UK climate that hopefully are quite easy to grow and hard to kill.  I then enthusiastically went off to the garden center and bought my kit!

Of course being a fashion conscious girly type of girl, I had to get colourful and stylish kit.  My kit here were some fleece lined cloggy things for the summer (wellington boots for the winter obvs) and a two pack of gardening gloves.  I was all set to go!  I had my dungerees, shoes and gloves sorted, my plants from the garden center and some planters for planting my little shoots in.  As I live with the parentals, all trowels and other such kit I already had at home, buuuuuut in the future I may have to get girly gardening tools, and DEFINITELY some sort of tea receptical because all gardeners have to have a special gardening cup for tea!  Anyway I started to pot up my plants.

Things I have learnt.
1.  I am really really weak and compost and soil is heavy.
2.  Gardening gets you really dirty - shocking revelation I know!
3.  It's kinda hard work - it counts as exercise right?  My doctor did tell me I need to exercise more......
4.  I'm gonna need a gardening hat.  My sunglasses are way too expensive to drop into dirt and I need to protect my milky white, pale and interesting, complexion!
5.  I'm gonna need a nail brush to get the dirt out from under my nails!

Anyway, here is the results of my first 'go' at potting up

Helpful doggie is helping me garden (I suspect he may be after the food)

We have a tub with peas in with a trellis and wire growy uppy thing for them to climb.  I used three of the sections of the tray I bought and spaced the little plants out evenly so they have lots of space each to grow.  Then the small squat tub is my herb and salad tub.  I put my rosemary and thyme plants in, then added five little rocket plants all spaced out so they will hopefully grow and spread nicely.  Thyme and rosemary I have grown in the past with varied results, but on the whole they are pretty hard to kill.  The rocket I have not grown before and fear the delicate little leaves may die easily in the cold weather.  But rocket is one of my favourite salad leaves and I think it is important to grow things you actually like to eat - so it may survive if I tend to it with care and attention.

The rest of the tray of peas I popped in another tub and using some bamboo I found lying around the garden (hope Dad doesn't need them!) I made a little structure for the peas to grow up.

By the time I had done these planters the temperature was starting to drop so I stopped for the day and covered my little plants up in case there is a frost.  Fingers crossed they will survive the night and in the next few days I can plant up the rest of my little plants.  The remaining veggies and fruit I am growing are:

Potatoes (Rocket)
Rhubarb
Carrots
Onions
Garlic
Purple sprouting broccoli
Blueberries

Again these are all items that I love and eat regularly so that is why I picked them along with items which are good bountiful growers perfect for the English climate.  Time will tell which are the most successful I suppose!  The above items plus the fruit plants and trees we already have will hopefully provide me with much food in the coming seasons and I will probably include some recipes I make from the resulting bounty................if they grow that is.  So keep tuned :)