Bare root bargains...

On the way to work each day I have to drive past an Aldi supermarket. Although I don't go in there very often I always glance over towards the store entrance because I know in the past that they have sold good value garden equipment and this year I was on the look out for a couple of fruit trees. Well, just as luck would have it, I was going past yesterday and I saw a big box of fruit trees being unloaded from the delivery and I made a mental note to return later.

All day I was wondering which trees I would liek for the allotment. I know that last year they stocked peach, apricot and greengage trees aswell as apple and pear.

I have a perfect spot for the trees which last year was a bit of an overgrown couch grass infested mess. So come 5pm I was straight in to have a look what they have got.

There was so much choice and I almost fainted at the price tag. All bare ruit fruit trees were £3.99 each and they had fruit bushes at 3 for £2.50. So I made my selections and headed for the till point.

My final chocies were:

1 x Conference Pear
1 x Cox Apple
1 x Cherry
6 x Red Gooseberry

I was particularly pleased with the gooseberry bushes. I had been wanting to plant some at the perimiter of the patio to prevent access to the patio from the path for vandals and the like. I had been looking the garden centres last week and they were priced anyway from £6-18 each depending on size. These will do me just nicely..

Like I said earlier, I have a spot marked out for the pear and apple tree. The cherry tree was a bit of an impulse buy and I'm still not sure where that is going to go. I am hoping to turn that weedy patch in to a nice mini orchard come summer. Using a few ideas I have seen in gardening books etc. I am going to dig out as many of the couch grass roots as possible. Plant the trees 1.5 apart and then cover the whole area with compost/well rotted manure and then water well. Following that I will cover the area with non-inked cardboard and then on top of that I will water the cardboard and then add a top dressing of manure. I believe this method is called lasagne gardening and the idea is that it keeps weeds down but improves soil fertility at the same time. We'll wait and see but on paper it does sound like it should work.

The first allotment I had when I was just 14 years old had a massive apple tree in the middle of it and obviously the roots were a slight problem to work around. I don't want to have roots growing all the way through the allotment and I believe these are dwarf root stock anyway. So in order to restrict the roots a bit I am going to copy the idea of a 'fig pit' and put 4 paving slabs in the ground to create a restricted space for the roots to grow in to. The fig pit will stop the roots from spreading underneath the surface close to the ground but will instead force the roots to move downwards before spreading down in a deeper area. Fingers crossed this idea also works, thats what I love about my gardening. Just experimenting to see what works well and what doesn't. It means that your gardening methods are changing all of the time and that of course means it can be very fun!

If you are interested in getting some of these fruit trees then get down there soon because I remember they sold out of the more exciting varieties last time and all that was left was Royal Gala apples.

We are in Paris next week from Monday to Friday so there will be no time for planting these just yet but judging by the care label as long as the roots are kept frost free then the trees can be planted a little later in the season. So I will have something to look forward to when we are back. The shed also needs painting too. The growing season is coming that is for sure...

Thanks for reading as always,

Martin



Bricks, bark and bloody brambles!

Welcome to the latest installment of our allotment update. It really is strange writing about things that I did at the end of March, but seeing as we were offline during that time, it's the best I can do I am affraid.

When we took over plot 114, the soft fruit area we had inherited really was the problem area. The raspberries had been completly untended and had spread across the whole area. The strawberry patch had ran amock too and I have disposed of no end of runners and plants. The whole area really put Amy off taking on this allotment but I managed to prod her in the direction of all of the positives and remind her that 'in the summer' it would all look fantastic. The patch was also covered in prickly brambles and blackberry bushes, and seeing as there is a bush behind our garden already, we know we have a good supply and therefore could eliminate them from the allotment completly.

I really can't believe this is what it used to look like, and for novice vegetable gardener Amy, I can see why she was slightly put off..

After completing Amy's paved area, I set about completing the fruit patch. In order to get Amy engaged I needed to make the place as nice as possible for her, and make a real effort to show that progress can be made on what was a barron wasteland.

It took hours, days, maybe just over a week to clear the endless amounts of nasty stuff. Not knowing whether the raspberries were a summer or autumn cropping variety. I took good advice from Monty Don and just simply removed any dead wood and lef the rest of the canes well alone, and just wait and see what happens this year.

It wasn't just what was on top of the soil it was what was underneath it aswell. You might remember we found tons of carpet under the vegetable area, and udner this there was bin bags, black plastic, rotted weed supressing membranes aswell as rotted tools and cigarette packets. What a concoction!

When I eventually got the patch looking like a patch of earth and not a wasteland. It was time to get planting. I said earlier that I binned a whole load of strawberry plants that were covering large proportions of the allotment and this might seem wasteful, but I wanted to start with new virus free stock in order to manage our fruit properly. We may as well start as we wish to go on..

So I ordered 30 plants from fothergills online, and we watered the strawberry bed right at the very end of the allotment very heavily before covering it with multi purpose compost and then a membrane to prevent weed growth. I then made a slit in the membrane for each plant and then added a top layer of bark which will keep the slugs off the strawberry fruit crop come early summer..

We had plenty of bark left so we made a bark path inbetween the raspeberry frames which makes access a lot better for us. I say two raspberry frames, but it is now actually just one raspberry frame and a frame for a grapevine too! To edge the path and strawberry bed we have just used bricks that we have found on our plot since taking it over, and it certainly looks very posh..

Here is the whole area..

We also have some fruit bushes too. There is one big blackcurrant bush, I've never grown blackcurrants before so that is quite exciting, the only problem being that big bud is present on the bush.

 Just a tip.. NEVER google 'big bud', you won't find anything to do with blackcurrant bushes at all.

Here's a picture of one of the diagnosed buds...

I've also added three gooseberry bushes opposite the blackcurrant bushes at the other end of the strawberry bed. They are young stock, so I'm not expecting much of a harvest this year.

All of the raspberry canes and established fruit bushes have been mulched with well rotted manure and it definately seems to have given them a boost.

I hope you like the area, the photos might not do it justice because of the rain. But we are definately the envy of the allotment site, there are already whispers from old hands about the allotment of the year destination, but I won't hold my breath! It definately looked superb in that scorching week in late July, I mean MARCH!

Come back soon for the next two installements which should be up by the end of the week!

I STILL can't believe it is May already!

Martin

Christmas - Where did that one go?

There's nothing better in my opinion than taking a day off in January and spending it digging in the garden in a polo shirt and pair of old jeans. So that is exactly what I have been doing today. I've been digging our little plot in our garden and adding 1 and a half years of rotted compost in the process. The area looks lovely now, it's just awaiting this years crops. I've covered the area with planks of wood that have come from an old broken bed frame so that weeds can't grow in this lovely moist area of land. Taking a look back, it looks like a mess with all that wood over it, but I know that come July this area of my garden is going to look a lot better than last year, well I certainly hope so!

The last post I made was just before Christmas when I was showcasing our homemade cross stitch cards. I said I was going to make a post with all of our other christmas activities in, but whilst digging I just remembered that I hadn't actually done that.

I posted about making our Christmas cakes in October, and I am pleased to say that they were very well received by the lucky people who found them under there tree last month. We had a fantastic day in mid-december icing the cakes and decorating them, we also had mincepies on the go so the whole house smelt superb.

Here's a small selection of the festive eatings we had this year...

Everything tasted great, which was a surprise on Christmas day when we tucked in to the cakes! It's hard to make something in advance and not know if it tastes ok until people have tried it on the day. It could have tasted awful, and we would still have handed them out unknowingly.

We also visited some nice places over Christmas including London, where the coach crashed into a lamp post on the way, and to Birmingham for the German Christmas market.

It's always nice walking down to uni when the market is on. It's full of nice smells and sounds all day long..

It was nice to see that the Bullring Bull was keeping warm on those cold nights...

Onwards to London, despite the crash, we had great fun doing a bit of Christmas shopping and visiting the zoo. We loved the Disney Store on Oxford Street and its festive theming...

Anyway, Christmas soon flew over and now it is 2012. A very happy new year to you all too, before I forget! It's going to be an exciting year this year, we are both hoping to go in to full time employment and we are going to have lots of fun outside of work along the way. I just can't wait to get back to the veg patch in the next couple of months and start doing the best bit about gardening, planting out the seedlings,plant and flowers ready for this years harvest.

This year we are going to be growing things that we enjoy eating to make sure we are making the most of our small plot. Last year we grew leeks, beetroot and turnips. Things I don't normally eat frequently enough, and in the case of Amy, things she doesn't like eating. We are going to grow those vegetables and fruits which make nice meals in themselves. Courgettes (and lots and lots of them), tomatoes, potatoes, runner beans and peppers. We'll be growing more than just that of course, but those are the things we really enjoy growing and eating, which funnily enough were the things which grew best las year.

What will you grow this year?

Martin

Free Food is Fantastic

This is the picture of a the park where I have played and played and played ever since I was a very small child...

It is just down the path from my grandparent's house...

 Notice anything?

That's right a very established crab apple tree. One of two on the park. You may notice that there is a pool of fermenting apples already littering the floor. Why should so much FOOD go to waste? People walk past these FREE APPLES every day. Surely there is no need to waste ALL of them....

So after picking half  of a plastic carrier bag full of these crab apples, about 2kg, this is what the kitchen sink looked like...

I wanted to making something nice and tasty from these apples. Crab apples are known for being sour and pretty unapealing when raw. But when cooked and with the addition of a little sugar, the juice is lovely. But is wasn't juice I was making today (well not primarily). I was going to take my first plunge in to the world of jelly making....

With a very nice looking, clear, perfectly set and most importantly delicious jelly, I was very pleased!

I've made endless amounts of jam before but I've never endeavoured to commit to a jelly. I think it's the fact that you have to strain it over night, do this and do that. Oh well. I looked at buying a jelly strainer and could not believe how expensive they were for such a simple and flimsy object, but with a little bit of searching and imagination I made my own. I got an old, clean bathroom towel and using some elastic bands attached it to a microwave stand. It worked a treat, I just wish I took a picture to show you how it worked.I put all of the boiled pulp in to the towel stand to drain the juice from, then I left it for 8 hours to drain. It said in the recipe to leave it over night, but I started it off early morning so made the jelly in the early evening.

Once you had the juice, it was a very similar method to jam making which I am familiar with.

The jelly is very sweet so I would proably use less sugar next time, but it is still very tasty.

Making the most of free food which is available in public places, the side of a road or anywhere else for that matter is a brilliant thing to do. Not only are you pleased with the fact that you are eating delicious, homemade food, but you are also happy it cost you no more than a bag of sugar.

Have a good day!

Martin

P.S I will definately be making jelly again, such fun and highly reccomended. Off to bake some more bread now!!

Beautiful..

Today saw the harvest of the first ripe tomato. This is from a variety simply called 'Orange Cherry'.

Hopefully this is the first of many, a whole vine were ripening in the sun this afternoon...

It was sweet and delicious! It was only small but we had half each. Not quite enough for tea.

Talking of meals though, we have had plenty of food from our own garden to eat. We had an entirely self produced curry (minus the sauce) the other day. We also had cottage pie with home grown new potatoes, spinach and runner beans. Sunday Lunch was completed with the daily harvest too!

Enjoy the weekend!

Martin

Summer is here!

Well, today has been absolutely delightful. The sun has been beaming down on us all afternoon and the temperature has reached 29 celcius.

I was unsure whether the good weather we had been promised all week would actually reach us when the sky was filled with grey all throughout Saturday. There was quite a blowing wind too, which added to our doubts.

We had been searching for somewhere to go strawberry picking in the local vicinity. Like I said in a previous post, the biggest ones in the area had shut down, so we were less than optimistic of finding somewhere really local. However, it was nice to see a sign for a ‘PYO’ in Dunnington, a very small village about 3 miles from us. We went yesterday and picked a bucket load of delicious, juicy strawberries. We enjoyed some yesterday with some scones and cream, and we are going to have some tonight after a barbeque at Amy’s house. The rest will be frozen for use at a later date.

You can see in this picture why I was quite doubtful about the gorgeous weather reaching us..

The wind was ripping through the open field!

Here is Amy with her ‘champion’ strawberry...

It was massive, and the perfect shape too!

Here is the final pickings...

Cost us £9 in total. But compared to buying the supermarket you can’t beat the flavour, freshness and the support to the local producers. When you work it out that Marks and Spencer’s strawberries cost £4.40 a kilogram, these were a bargain because we got almost 4 kilos.

The afternoon was very pleasant despite the grey skies. Picking your own is great fun, and gives you a real sense of getting back to nature.

I’m off now to enjoy the rest of this baking heat , and fill my face with some lovely barbeque food.

Enjoy the rest of your day, please think of me when I start work at 5am.

Martin



Hedgerow Heaven

Well. My grandma and grandad have lived in their current home for almost twenty years, and yesterday I saw something for the first time that I had previously failed to notice.

Across the road, is a hedgerow with a mixture of different bushes, and in the middle were...

Raspberries!

What a delightful find. I am used to helping myself to plentiful blackberries and elderflowers but I have never come across Raspberries like this before. I am always keen to make the most of free food wherever I can.

Why not?

We are going to tuck in to these ones tonight, we also had one off our measly raspberry bushes/canes.

Talking of elderflowers I picked over 20 heads, to make some elderflower cordial. It's quite late in to the elderflower season, in fact I struggled to find 20 good quality, healthy heads. But I did. I've made elderflower cordial before and it was absolutely delicious. I read on the River Cottage forum that the best way to store it is in plastic water bottles (we have plenty of these lying around) and then you should keep 1 in the fridge for current use, and then pop the rest in the freezer until they are required, then you don't have any odd tasting stuff in a couple of weeks. We bought some cordial at Gardener's World/ The Good Food Show, if it tastes anything like it then I will be very, very pleased.

I'll update you with how it went as soon as possible. I know I still haven't posted about the candles we made, but be sure to find it here in the next couple of days.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

Martin

Just in time!

It's that time of year again.The time of year I absolutely love which I inherited from my Grandma Margaret. It's Wimbledon! For two whole weeks we ask for bright, sunny days, bucket loads of strawberries and gallons of champagne.

People all across the country will be getting in to the spirit of things with the consumption of Tesco, Waitrose, and Morrisson's strawberries and the cheapest single cream they could find. Well, I almost was one of them people.

I've read blogs, where people have been picking punnets upon punnets  full of the juciest and most delicious strawberries around. I have been so green with envy for weeks, but with just over an hour to go before the first racket hits the ball, we have been saved by not just one strawberry...

but our first raspberry too.

They look delicious don't they. Ok, that isn't the most uniform strawberry that you've ever seen. But nonetheless it is red.

I'm not sure how we are going to go about this. Half a strawberry and raspberry each? Maybe Amy will have the raspberry and I'll have the strawberry?

I'll let you know how it turns out. (and who wins!)

Have a wimbledon-tastic day.

I wish you full punnets of strawberries.

Martin

Winter

It's strange to think that on a lovely, sunny June day the topic on my mind is the hard months of winter.

We're going to have a go at growing a range of brasicas including cabbage, brocolli and purple sprouting to name a few of the seed varieties we bought at Gardener's World.
We also need to get a move on with some of the root crops including parsnips and turnips, otherwise we really will have missed them for this year...

Don't worry, we're not only confined to the doom and gloom of the 'hunger months' but we are still preparing and sowing for summer and early through to mid autumn.

I transfered the lettuce seedlings in to the ground directly next to the leeks and then  planted a row of beetroot too. The beetroot looks great, it's been sat in a pot up until now and they have come on great in the short time we've had the greenhouse. Amy doens't like beetroot, so it's only done a small row for myself. We can plant a row of lettuce each week now for a few weeks time so that we have a continuous crop in to the autumn.

The broad beans look really good, seeing as we only bought 12 plug plants that were a bit battered and starved and thus reduced at a local garden centre, we are both amazed how well they have come on. They are all flowering and we watched the bees hard at work on them. I noticed the first mange tout flowers today aswell which is fantastic. Here are a couple of pictures of the bees doing their business..

There are plenty of tomato flowers on the tomato plants, and the first sign on peppers on the pepper plants. It was great to have Amy back in the garden now she has finally finished her own exams. She helped me move the sunflowers on to larger pots, and they will be moved over to my Grandma and Grandad's house next week or just after. We are keeping a few for our own garden and I plan to save the seeds. She also got her infamous pink watering can out and gave all the plants a little sprinkle this evening. Everything seems to be thriving, even the scorched runner beans are coming along really well...

Have a good day!

Martin

Gardener's World Live Report - Best of the Rest

Welcome to the final installment of our 'Gardener's World Live Report'. Don't forget that the show highlights are aired on BBC2 tonight (Friday) at 8pm.

These are the final photos we took of the event including the bits and bobs that didn't really fit in the other parts of the report.

To start off, probably the weirdest of all the gardens was the 'Honey, I've shrunk the garden' which featured a giant sculpted worm, and a lego character gardener. Being the proud owners of a wormery and fully appreciating all worms in our garden for soil fertility and chicken snack food, we thought this garden should feature in the report somewhere. So here it is...

After we saw this garden we spotted the GW team doing a bit of filming for tonight's show.

Over on the edible patches were some tasty looking cucumbers....

 There was a big presence of the UK Cucumbers growers society (genuine society) who were on hand following the e-coli outbreak in mainland Europe. There was also the UK Tomato Growers association, who were running a competition to name a new variety of tomato which was shaped like a love heart. It was very cute. We tasted it and it was very sweet, just like the concept, and we entered the name 'Bingham' after Amy's surname. It's quite a bouncy name and sounds like a variety of tomato or soft fruit.

We are always trying to make the garden more approachable to living wildlife. This display by the RSPB showed how easy it was to make a multi-storey hedgehog/insect hide using everyday bits and bobs..

To finally conclude our whole report. We are going to revisit the show gardens where two more really caught our eye.

This hobbit hole style garden called 'Naturally Playful' was quite innovative and interesting...

This garden called 'Remember the Dream' by MacMillan Cancer Research was rather inspiring. It had beautiful pink obelisks which reminded us of Rapunzel's tower and a small pool too...

The garden was a real nice touch, and deserved it's high accolades. It wouldn't be fair not to include this garden following the support we got when Amy's mum was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. Any mention, large or small will hopefully spread the underlining message...

Well, that pretty much rounds up our four part report. Remember, that parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found directly beneath this post on the homepage.

We had such a great time and we hope you enjoyed reading about it.

Martin and Amy

Gardener's World Live Report - Part 3

I hope you enjoyed reading parts 1 and 2 of this report. If you haven't seen them yet, then they should be directly under this post on the home page.

I mentioned in Part 2 that beehives and chickens featured prominently throughout the show. Not only was there a large presence in the show gardens and displays, but there were plenty of stalls inside that were selling or advertising related products etc.

This stand was by the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA).

It really is a step in the right direction for promoting the hobby, it was one of the most bespoke and outstanding pieces in the whole hall. As you will all probably know, numbers of honey bees around the world are in serious decline following outbreaks of viruses and bacteria that thrive on healthy colonies. This stand really went the extra mile. There were many beekeepers on hand partaking in different activities. Some were taking apart hives and demonstrating to potential newbies. There were other beekeepers demonstrating candle making, which is something we hope to do soon and there were others manning stalls with honey and beekeeping products. There was a display hive too. It is basically a glass window with two brood frames in so that people can see how the bees go about their business. It is always interesting to see the bees even though we have our own, but because Amy doesn't go near the hive (yet!) it was great for her to see them up close. They also had 2 bee hives in the outside area with live beekeeping demonstrations taking place throughout the day. It did make me laugh how clever they were bringing two hives and plonking them in the middle of the show gardens. Think of all that amazing honey they will get now!

Before we move on, we will take a look back at the other gardens or displays with beehives on them.

This was one of the edible patches designed by local schools and charities.

This show garden was called 'Working with nature' it was a very tranquil looking garden.

There was also the show garden which we awarded the 'Our-good-life' silver medal.

Well, I suppose you are all bee-hived out. Well, here is a selection of gardens and displays which were based on the 'grow your own' theme.

The above display by 'Robinson's seeds and plants' was a breathaking mass of colour and texture. It was different from most other displays because it was a display of harvested vegetables and  fruits rather than growing plants. It still scooped a Gold Medal, and we bought the lovely Filius Blue chilli pepper plant which was photographed in Part 1 from here. You can also see the 'Turk's Turban' squash in the bottom left corner, we bought one of these plants too because Amy was amazed with the shape and colour of them. The plant has now been planted in the squash and pumpkin bed. They had this display of beans too, I am very envious of them...

This next garden was very vintage. It had a cute little chicken coop/adapted rabbit hutch in the foreground and the whole plot was in 4 segments with the greenhouse in the centre. I thought the 'Dig for Victory' post was a really nice touch. This garden had lots of good information published on small placards strategically placed throughout the garden. Great idea!

In the past I've been to talks by Paul Kelly, James Martin, Jimmy Doherty and Carol Klein. But this year we went to see good old Alan Titchmarsh doing a talk about growing your own veg. Amy wasn't keen on the idea, but I dragged her by the hair all the way to the stage. (joke). She did buckle and came along, and we were both surprised at how funny he actually is and his whole talk was adapted around growing in smaller spaces which was very relevant for us. He did a questions and answers session at the end, which was good of him. The picture doesn't show a lot other than Alan and some stranger's heads...

We got a bit closer to good old Monty though who was filming for Friday's show...

Anyway, away from the gardeners and back to the gardens. Or displays as like to call this next lot.

The UK Bonsai society always make me laugh. People queue up to talk to the experts and their conversation always goes like this.

Person: ''I had a bonsai tree''
UK Bonsai Expert: ''..and it died''

It always makes me laugh at loud, the same thing happened again yesterday and Amy gave me a nudge in the side. The bonsai trees on display always look amazing, like minature pieces of precious woodland. But, if you have ever owned a bonsai tree like I have, they die, and fast. I've had four or five bonsai trees in the past and not a single one lasted more than two weeks. As soon as one leaf falls off the whole lot seems to go, the conditions your provide are always too hot, or too cold, too sheltered or not sheltered enough, too much light, or not enough! No matter what book I have read or what I have done, the same result is always impending doom. What sort of witchcraft and wizardry do they use to nurture these beauties....

Amazing aren't they!

Well, I have to admit that I am pretty bad when it comes to flowers, my knowledge is not as extensive as my knowledge of fruit and vegetable growing. I often forget the names of the flowers like with the following displays which are actually rather beautiful...

I can just about say that either side of these flowers there are some alliums. But I'm not sure what these are. I like the white and pink ones near the top.

Here are some more outstanding flower displays..

Some foxgloves...

Amy liked the display by the company that provided the trees for the Royal Wedding on April 29th. A couple of the trees from the wedding were on display...

I have been writing this post since 9:30 am and it is now 11:39 am. Time flies. There are a lot more photos left, so I am going to do a fourth part to this report called 'Best of the Rest' It will got live at 9am tomorrow Friday for those of you who are interested.

We had such a good day, I really envy all of those people who have been today too. Can't wait for next years show, Amy did joke that we should do a show garden because she recons I could do a better job than some of them.. Don't even want to think about all of the work that goes in to that!

I really thankyou for your support once again.

Martin

Gardener's World Live Report - Part 2

I was really unsure how Amy would react to a whole day at a gardening event, and I am really pleased to say that she absoutely loved it as much as I did. The whole enjoyment of the day was helped by the favourable conditions. Nobody wants to be looking around the show gardens when it is really gloomy and raining at the bucket load. So thankfully the skies were relatively clear in the morning, and it was a bit overcast in the morning. The only time that the heavens opened was when we were walking back to the car with armfuls of newly acquired bits and bobs, typical. I'd rather it rain as we were leaving rather than as we walking around the amazing show gardens.

The Royal Horticultural Society and the Gardener's World team did an amazing job of allocating the gold, silver and bronze medals to all of the exhibited show gardens. However, we had our own personal favourites too. We are going to share with you our top five gardens from the show. There were some outstanding 'displays' too, but you will see in part 3 of our report where we draw the line between 'show gardens' and 'displays'

In reverse order....

5th

Heart Healthy Garden designed by Paul Baines and John Woods Nurseries is inspired by healthy and pro-active lifestyles. The garden was sponsored by 'Flora Pro-active' and had a very modern and comfortable feel to it. The main features of the garden were the georgeous seating arrangements and this gentle pool on one side. This garden was a real celebrity hot spot, we spotted lots of famous people browsing this particular garden.

4th

They say you always remember the first and the last and this is true in the case of 'The Edible Classroom' by Hannah Genders as it was the first garden we saw at the show. Hannah is a local desinger and her last show garden which was for received a gold medal at the Malvern show is permanently on display at a local farm shop. 'The Edible Classroom' is a burning desire to roll out a nation wide use of allotments and growing spaces in schools. This show garden was a real novelty with fruit and vegetables being grown in old style desks and the show garden had chickens too. The ladies were a real hit....

3rd

Bronze medal time now. Our third favourite garden was the 'Grow Your Own' garden which was also the 'Grow Your Own' stage. There were many talks on growing fruit and vegetables during the day, and we attended one hosted by Alan Titchmarsh. The garden had two stunning green houses, and a row of delightful raised beds with some great demonstrations of companion planting and natural pest avoidance techniques. The varities displayed were very colourful, with sunny yellow courgettes, red cabbage and purple runner beans.

2nd

Our silver award goes to a garden which for me would be idealic. Each night before we go to bed, we are currently watching an episode per night of the Good Life TV series from the 70s. This garden really did look like it belonged to Tom and Barbara. It had a georgeous light blue chicken coop with a white fenced area for them to free-range in. It also had a WBC bee hive in the middle of 8 or so apple trees. At the end of the garden was a small vegetable patch. The garden was perfect. It was quite romantic in a really odd way. I just loved everything about it. If that was my garden I would be so proud. It is not the most practical thing, but being self-sufficient is not always practical. If you had an allotment in conjunction with this garden then you really could be on your way to self-sufficiency. Delightful!

1st - Gold Medal

This garden called 'Gorilla's Plight' was compiled by Birmingham City Council. It was simply amazing. People were on their mobile phones saying 'it's like something we've never seen before' and 'it's breathtaking'. To be perfectly honest it was all of those things. We can give it the prize of 'Our-good-life Top Garden' but you really need to see this garden to believe it. There was so much going on, you didn't know where to look at any one time. A huge waterfall and pond was incorporated in to the centre of the garden, and the exotic foliage was breathtaking. There were recycled metal animals too, including Gorillas (obviously) and turtles and beetles. This was the most deserving winner. Not only a RHS Gold medal, but ours too. Congratulations!!

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You can probably see some sort of theme in our selections. Fruit, vegetables and growing your own! After all this is what we are all about, and this is why our blog exists, so it is only fitting that these were the gardens we enjoyed the most and took the most from. The other mini theme was water, Amy loves water features and anything to do with water in gardens. She could be the next Charlie Dimmock! In reality there was no chance of anybody beating 'Gorilla's Plight' it was unbelievable, so she didn't need to twist my arm on that one. But we agreed that 'Healthy Heart Garden' did fit in with 'Our-good-life' theme as we do strive to be healthier and more pro-active in everything we do. The Cabbages for Classrooms idea is lovely, I remember that anything to do with gardening in science at school really made my academic year more worthwhile. Beehives and Chicken Coops were really 'in' at this years show. I remember that in the past only ornamental chickens and beehives have been used, but now there are real hens, cockerels and buzzing bees in 'live hives'. This must be a good sign of the population's trends...

We have so many photos and annecdotes to share, so I will be busy writing the next installment during the day and it will be published at 5pm, so be sure to check back.

Thanks for taking the time to read our blog.

Have a great day!

Martin

Gardener's World Live Report - Part 1

Last night, I couldn't sleep. I was like a child at Christmas. I just kept thinking 'I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow, I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow etc.' I think we were both so excited.

We were up early this morning and left home at about 7:45 am to make sure we were amongst the first throught the barrier and in to the event. I'm going to do this report in three parts. This one now is about all the amazing and fun things that we bought (because that's what yo uare all really interested in) and then tomorrow morning will be a feature on the show gardens (including our own rankings) and then finally tomorrow afternoon/evening you will get all of the rest!

There are so many problems with this event. The first problem is that you spend a lot of money on gardening products, and then secondly they add the Good Food Show to the event too. Therefore you spend a lot more money in the Good Food Show. The third problem, which is a genuine problem is that you buy so much stuff and then you soon realise that one more piece of straw will break the camel's (your) back, therefore everybody buys a £12 trolley and you are constantly getting hacked with it. (We bought 3 tubtrugs to carry things in, they will have a use after today!)

Well here is what we bought. Quite an array of useful bits and bobs...

I mentioned in a previous post about how we are rapidly preparing for winter. We scoured all of the great seed offers available and bought loads of seeds, you can just about see them laid down on the table above. When it come to seed buying, I have a real addiction and don't know when to stop. I think 'that one looks good, and that one, that'll do too', then you have more seeds than you realise to add to your already massive seed collection. Oh well. I love it. I discovered a few great varieties too which look like they are ideal for smaller plots and gardens. The whole list of seeds is as follows....

Vegetable and Fruit Seeds
Courgette - Zucchini
Cauliflower - Igloo
Kale - Dwarf Green Curled
Turnip - Oasis
Aubergine - Orlando F1 Hybrid
Strawberry - Woodland
Climing Bean - Blauhilde
Sweetcorn - Hark F1 Hybrid
Brussel Sprouts - Brilliant F1 Hybrid
Swiss Chard - Bright Lights
Swede - Brora
Broad Bean - Aqua Dulch Claudice
Courgette - Foleil F1 Hybrid
Tomato - Gardener's Light
Lettuce - Little Gem
Brocolli - Purple Sprouting

Flower seeds
Mixed Wildflowers
Dwarf Topalino

The ones that are in bold have already been sown in to pots! How good are we! We got home about 4:45pm and we were in the garden until about 7:30. So much to do today, and even more to do tomorrow.

We also bought a great book about allotments called 'The allotment source book' by Caroline Foley, but in general it looks like a great book about growing your own (more reading...)  for only £5 too. It was marked up at £20 originally. We both love an impulse buy and bargain!

In the photo you can see the lovely planter we bought. It was very 'rustique' and we have filled it with potting compost and scattered various herb seeds. It will look great as a mini herb garden.

Amy also bought a fat ball maker for making our own fatballs for the birds.

Here are the 'growing' things we bought...

You can just about recognise a few of the things we bought.

The last few years at Gardener's World they have had a 'plant swap' stall, where you take a plant you don't want or need and swap it for one of the others that somebody else has brought in. This time, they changed it a bit. So you donated your plants to Children in Need and then if you wanted one of the other plants you simply donated what you thought it was worth to charity. From this tent we bought three sweetcorn plants that are very well established. Remember our sweetcorn failure when we planted the seeds earlier in the year. We also got a butternut squash plant that was at the top of our shopping list before hand anyway.

Well. The sweetcorn have been transported in to their final growing position too...

......in the large yellow tubtrug next to the rhubarb. We have had such great success with growing the courgettes in a tubtrug that we had no hesitation putting the sweetcorn in one too. Well we did have 3 brand new tubtrugs to use up too...

One of my favourite buys was this georgeous 'Filius Blue' pepper plant. The plant is full of small sized chilli peppers with the most indulgent purple colour, however they apparently turn red as they finally turn ripe.

Amy is very busy in the background labelling all the plants. We bought some funky yellow plant labels and we have now labelled everything.. and have abruptly ran out of labels for future use.

Look at the purple flowers too. This is a really ornamental type, it certainly brings some lovely colour to the veg patch especially with new tubtrugs and the yellow labels...

Simply georgeous!

I mentioned earlier that we bought the butternut squash plant, well Amy was intrigued when she saw a Turk's Turban squash in the show gardens... so we bought one of those too! The area that used to be where the eglu sat has been raised up with some well rotted home made compost and some multi purpose compost from left over bits from one place and another. The two squash plants are planted here, and are waiting to be joined by the pumpkin plants which I am going to leave for a little bit longer in the greenhouse...

We can't wait for our own squash to grow.



We bought plenty of delicious food at the Good Food Show but I'll put that all in part 3.

We've had the most amazing day, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about what be bought!

Part 2 will be up at 9am tomorrow (sharp!).

Thanks for reading.

Martin