My latest bad joke– um, I mean homage to Plot 52

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 19 June 2012 in growing | 1 comment

Everyone already follows Plot 52, right? Fantastically sweet and funny allotment/growing illustrations – definitely one of my favourite blogs.

I thought of Plot 52 while watching three bees going about their buzzy business on my raspberry bushes the other day — clearly they weren’t just any old bees, they were …

Raspbees :)

(Greg’s pictures and jokes are *much* better, I promise ;) )

Garden epiphanies

Posted by louisa on Monday 18 June 2012 in growing | 3 comments

Since deciding to have a ‘less is more’ approach this year (and being further encouraged on that path by seeds rotting in the soil and later by slugs), I’ve not felt overwhelmed by the garden this year and it’s given me the mental space to make bigger picture/longer term plans too. Both good things.

I keep finding myself having epiphanies about How It Should Be or eureka moments, when a number of different ‘problems’ click together into a pattern to solve them all. Mostly just little things like spotting the perfect place for a much wanted extra fruit tree, figuring out what to do with some of the surplus of lavender plants (two self-watering window boxes on the balcony, under the living room window – will smell fab!) or realising that it makes sense to put my not-totally-hardy herbs in my not-totally-hardy (terracotta) pots, since I’d have to protect them in a harsh winter anyway.

The latter decision led to a bit of a cascade – if the herbs are going in there, what will happen to the lingonberry and cranberry bushes that are already in there? Well, the lingonberry is a nice shape and would look good as a full stop at the end of the ground-level bed – I’d just been wondering what to put there. And I thought the long-fronded cranberry would look good tumbling off a raised stone-walled bed – I’ve got some scrap stone and thought I’d make a new small bed between two existing ones just for it, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon … then I realised if the herbs were going in the pots, there was now a space in the ‘herb’ bed which is conveniently at the top of a tumbledown-able wall… Perfect!

The best thing is that nearly all the stuff I’m doing at the moment is with perennials so I won’t need to do it again next year. Trying to plant a few garden with annual veggies each year has been too much for grasshopper-minded me. The biggest ‘bigger picture’ decision I’ve made is to have all the beds in the garden, bar two raised ones, filled with herbs or fruit bushes so if I don’t do any annuals veggies one year, we’ll still have a productive, and well-stocked, garden. This year, because of the “less is more” and the slugs, we’ve got quite a few empty containers but I’m that not bothered because they can be stacked out of the way and the planning/perennial planting gains have been worth the smaller harvest. And if I can be bothered, there are still some thing I could sow now to fill in the empty spots anyway.

Basically, in short, I’m really glad I decided to have an easy growing year this year because it should make future years easier too.

Have you done anything different with your garden this year?

Adding to our vintage crockery collection with a charity shop bargain

Posted by louisa on Monday 11 June 2012 in charity shopping | 5 comments

We had a good charity shop score on Saturday – 4 little plates and two bowls for £1, all in perfect condition, from one of the charity shops in Shipley (which is the place to charity shop these days – all the cool kids are doing it).

Not only is that a pretty decent bargain by itself, it’s an especially good score as it’s in the classic 1970s Bacchus by Kilncraft design – which is “our” vintage pattern.

It was one of those everywhere patterns in the late 1970s-early 1980s and my mum & dad had a set – I remember it vividly from my early childhood, especially as it regularly turned up as props on TV shows back then (which, as a small child, is enough to make you feel special by association).

Here is a picture of me at about 18 months, Christmas 1980, with one of the Bacchus dishes on the table in front of me (bottom right corner):

We stole acquired what remained of my mum & dad’s set a few years ago (including that dish from the picture) and have slowly been adding to it with charity shop finds over the last few years. A milk jug here, a couple of bowls there. A couple of years ago, we found the remains of another family’s set in a charity shop in Armley – dinner plates, side plates and cups – on a white background instead of the mustard, but that was close enough for us (and they’re the ones I tend to use when taking food pictures). And we get items from other sources too, for example, just a few months ago, John’s mum found a few more not-quite-dinner plates at her mum’s house so we’ve added them to our pile.

I’m not very much into collecting things because special collected items tend to end up as unused Sunday best but they are very much in everyday use here so it’s fun to find these items as we go about our travels – especially when they’re cheap or free. Coffee cups and individual dinner plates often pop up on eBay for £5+p&p or so but that misses the point for me — the hunt or rather the stumbling-upon is half the pleasure. The other half of the pleasure is, of course, still using perfectly good crockery that is as old as me and will probably still be usable in another 30 years time :)

Do you have anything in particular that you collect or look out for in your charity/thrift/op shop adventures?

The end of May already? Gosh!

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 29 May 2012 in chickens, growing, house, meta | 6 comments

I disappeared again, didn’t I? Thanks so much to the people taking the time to check on me in comments/via Twitter/in real life etc – I am fine, just been busy and then being lazy ;) I have been keeping up with other people’s blogs (reading if not always commenting), just not getting around to writing anything myself :)

What have I been up to since I was last writing regularly in February? (Cor, that was ages ago!) Here’s a quick recap for FutureMe and anyone else who might be interested (hi Mum!) ;)

Growing

Due to the aforementioned busy-ness and laziness, I decided to go for a less-is-more approach with my growing this year. Then about half my seeds rotted in the soil (thanks for the sudden winter-temperatures in April, Weather, really thaaaaaaaanks) so it turns out I’m doing a very-much-less-is-more thing this year ;)

I’ve got a handful of courgette plants (three varieties) and a few pattypan squash/pumpkin plants too — not a huge amount but I think I’d struggle to find room for many more in our garden (silver linings and all that!). I thought all my tomato seeds were going to rot in the soil so asked for half a dozen plants from my dad (who always grows too many tomato plants) — but at the last count, about a dozen of my seeds made it too so again, I’ve got enough plants for my small growing area. I’ve also got broad beans & runner beans in decent quantities, and a few other things such as a few cucumbers, some chilli plants, some new-this-year herbs and misc salad. It’s not going to feed us throughout the summer but it’s better than nothing — and I’ve very much enjoyed not being overwhelmed by having to pot on stupid amounts of seedlings etc. Everything seems a lot healthier too since I can lavish attention (and other resources) on the few, rather than spreading it around the many.

The thing that led my initial less-is-more idea was a decision I made a couple of months ago to switch all but two of the garden beds to being perennial fruit or herb beds: I’ll grow veg in the remaining two beds and in all the containers I have around the place (and continue to make), but if I don’t get around to planting a lot of veg one year then we’ll still have a garden that is relatively productive and looks quite nice too (compared to bare soil anyway). With the exception of a couple of strawberry plants that got attacked by chickens (thanks chickens, thaaaaaaaaanks), all the fruit planting I’ve done this year seems to have gone well – I bought more cheapy fruit bushes from Aldi in the winter (2 more blackcurrants, 2 more redcurrants, 3 more raspberries), which have all taken, and various strawberries to fill out the soft fruit harvest throughout the summer. None of those will really produce much this year but last year’s cheapy bushes, not so cheap bushes & trees and strawberries are all producing some fruit, and we’re hoping that John’s apple trees will also start producing in earnest too.

Chickens

The fluffy cluckers are doing fine – producing eggs like billy-o at the moment, nearly a 100% lay rate over the past few weeks which isn’t bad considering they’re all over 2 years old now. No sign of any broodiness yet this year, even in the hot spells, which has so far put any hatching plans I might have on hold. Maybe next year.

They seem to have liked all the dry weather of late – their run was a bit muddy in April but now the dry earth is perfect for scratching and dust-bathing in. They like the rest of the garden for the same reason – hence me losing some strawberry plants.

Goals for 2012

Mischevious chickens

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 10 April 2012 in chickens, growing | 7 comments

After a bit of a blogging holiday, I intended to write a puntastic post about how both this blog and the garden were “springing back to life”. My laziness at the end of last year – leaving lots of salad go to seed then not clearing away the pots – has meant that we’ve got various self-seeded leaves popping up all over the place (including some well established swiss chard plants which didn’t die off during the mild winter) in addition to all the fruit bushes/trees getting their blossom on. But then (overly-dramatic music) … HENS HAPPENED:

Oh hello there garden wrecker.

I thought I’d let the girls out to have a scratch about/weed the garden while I pottered in the greenhouse – sowing lots of seeds (although not as many as previous years) and potting on some other stuff:

Within minutes though, those surviving swiss chard plants were reduced to this:

Some of the other self-seeded edibles in the lower bit of the garden were also munched, and my daffodils were duly stomped on:

She was happy destroying them until she realised there were strawberry plants in the trough underneath that.

You can see her going “ooh! they’ll be fun to stomp!”. I don’t mind about the daffodils – which weren’t up to much anyway – or the general mess they cause flicking top soil everywhere but I shooed her off the strawberries. That hen, Ginger, then went over to investigate what Ms Mauve was up to:

Quietly eating bittercress. I looked away for a second and heard a wing-flapping kerfuffle:

Ginger had tried to jump onto a big soil filled plant tub but it had fallen over. She, of course, took the opportunity to have a scratch through it for anything tasty before going off to cause chaos elsewhere. Elsewhere eventually turned out to be next-door-but-one’s garden with her fellow Black Rock partner in crime, Blacksy — and they’re the two that don’t like being picked up so I had to do comedy cross-garden chicken chasing to get them back home.

Some of them are more darling though. I was sowing the last of my tomatoes (late, I know) in the greenhouse when I heard a quiet little “can I come in?” buck-buck.

Little Blue jumped into the greenhouse and had a good look around – under the staging, on the staging, pecking at old growbags etc – all the while seemingly asking me questions: “is this your coop? where are the roost bars? where are the nest boxes? can I eat those seeds?” Very sweet. (And no, she couldn’t.)

Arabihen nights aka why my play script has muddy footprints on it

Posted by louisa on Thursday 1 March 2012 in chickens | 1 comment

Lime the chicken has dramatic aspirations.

“Why there no role for chicken in play? I could even play duck or turkey, I has range.”

“Well, if not starring role, how about backstage? I helps with the page markers.”

“Mmm, neon is my favourite flavour.”

(In related news, today has been a lovely day and I sat out in the garden to do some non-computer work & have a cup of tea. It wasn’t quite warm enough really but it was still very nice. Hurrah for spring-like days!)

My late winter to-dos in the garden

Posted by louisa on Monday 20 February 2012 in chickens, growing | 3 comments

We’re trying to return to normality after a fortnight of poorliness – and I’m feeling very aware that time is marching on in the garden.

Things I need to do ASAP:

• Plant the six soft fruit bushes I bought from Aldi just before I got ill. Last year’s Aldi bushes are doing well so I got the same again: two blackcurrant, two redcurrant & two raspberry. The raspberry bushes will be planted alongside the ones from last year but not sure about the others – I’m wondering if it will make them cry if I just put them in tubs this year? Speaking of which…
• Transplant the honeyberry bushes. They were in containers last year but I think they’ll stretch their legs further if I can put them in a bed instead. Perhaps I should take this as a lesson for the other berry bushes & find somewhere for them now!
• Transplant existing strawberries (in case they survive being dog-nibbled) and get some more for a June-ish glut. The existing strawberry plants are a season-long variety which is good in many ways but bad for jam-making. I want jam.
• Wonder if I’ve still got time/space to get another small cherry tree in the ground this winter. Or get a container-sized one at least.
• Freshen up all the beds/big containers. Some of them just need topping up with compost, others are going to get a “mature” chicken poo boost.
• Decide what veg I’m going to grow this year. Usually an early-January job but since January didn’t happen here this there, I still need to get organised. There are a few more things joining potatoes on my “no, don’t grow” list this year, including peppers and leeks, but I’m not sure what I do want to grow — I better decide soon because some things need sowing in a few weeks.
• Conduct a roll call to see what plants we’ve already got. I suspect this should happen before the latter. I’m particularly thinking about herbs and other stuff that will/should have survived the winter. I’m hoping to make a decent herb bed this year, one way or another, so it’ll be good to know what’s already available.
• Decide whether or not we’re going to try hatching eggs this year – and if so, decide what type of eggs to buy. This is a conditional thing – we’ll only do it if one of the chickens goes seriously broody. Ginger spent half of 2011 broody – if she does the same this year, she can, essentially, hatch her own replacements. I want to make the decision before she goes broody though because we’ll have to rush to buy eggs/get a broody coop built in good time so I’d rather have a plan ready before then.
• Clean out the greenhouse. Naughty me left it in a bit of a state last winter – it needs clearing, cleaning and airing before I can start to use it again for this year.
• Plant out the spent forced hyacinth bulbs. datacreate & Hazel have given me hope that these might regrow again in the garden next year. I’m going to plant them near the cherry tree & the existing fruit bushes as I know those beds are less likely to be disturbed by my digging this year.

What’s on your to-do list for your garden/allotment this week?