March – end of month review

Posted by louisa on Thursday 31 March 2011 in growing, less than 12 clothes challenge, personal finance | 15 comments

March has been a rather expensive and stressful month as we’ve been having our bathroom fitted and a ridiculous amount of things went wrong. But at the same time, we’ve also learnt some new skills and had some lovely Spring days – just how fantastic is it that the world is turning green again?

Goals in 2011 progress

As in February, I’m working towards a few goals if not anywhere near completing them yet. I’ve sown a lot of seeds for veg – unfortunately lost a lot of baby seedlings to damping off and other bad propagator management but I’m learning all the time. We should have our first fully homegrown 2011 salad in the next few weeks.

I’ve not been baking that much but the four loaves we made each on our baking course at the weekend keep up my average ;) They were sourdough loaves and we also now have starters from them – not quite growing one from scratch but I’ll be satisfied if I can keep that alive and bake from it.

We’ve also been on a screenprinting course – which isn’t one of the simple living goals mentioned here but is on my personal goals list – and enjoyed it a lot. We’re booked in for another session the week after next and I’ve already got a few things worked out that I’d like to print.

Buy less than 12 items of clothing in 2011

Even though I thought I’d cave this month, my tally is still at zero. I have been looking at things online but nothing has wowed me enough for me to get out my credit card. I did add some things to basket a couple of weeks ago but deliberately left it overnight to see how I felt about them in the morning – and in the morning, I was indifferent. I quite like that.

I think a Spring jacket may break my embargo – my short woolly swing coat is a little too warm at the moment but my hoodie is at the dog-walking stage of its lifecycle. We’ll see.

One other thing: one day, while putting away laundry, I sorted through all the t-shirts/tops I have in my chest of drawers. I didn’t get rid of anything, just tidied into related piles and refolded – I rediscovered a few tops which got looked over in the usual heap format of my drawers. Shopping your own wardrobe/drawers rules!

Growing stuff and the chickens

As I mentioned above, the growing stuff thing is going well-ish. I might live to regret it if there is a cold spell in the next few weeks but I planted out my broad bean seedlings yesterday. I’ve got two lots of potatoes sown in “bags”. My tomato seedlings – the ones that survived the Great Damping Off Crisis of 2011 – are beautifully leafy. My cucumbers and pumpkins look green and luscious. The chillis & peppers are growing slowly but looking good. The radish seedlings numerous, the cauliflowers hanging in there and various lettuce & salad leaves at varying stages of sprouting but looking very promising. On the fruit front, John B gave us some jostaberry canes so they’re in the ground too now. All our other berry bushes & fruit trees are budding/leafing well (the photo above is one of the apple trees), and the two strawberry runners that I thought had died have proved me wrong. Basically, it’s all go in the garden, greenhouse & propagator!

The chickens are doing well – they’ve met our nephew on a couple of occasions (our 4 year old niece comes to visit sometimes too, and John’s young cousins, but at 13 months old, the ‘phew is their youngest visitor to date) and got an new layer of woodchips to scratch around in. In return, they’ve given us a magnificent 200 eggs exactly (well, exact at this point – if I go down later, there may be another one). That’s an average of 6.45 a day, at a rough average of 8p per egg in consumables (£12 ish of food, and about £4 for straw, shavings, seed treats & powders).

Adventures in frugal vertical gardening – ideas for planters?

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 29 March 2011 in frugal, growing, making, wood stuff | 9 comments

Got a dull flat wall I’d like to “vertical garden” up – need to make/acquire/modify some planters. Any suggestions? Need to be cheap/free :)

I asked that grammatically horrific question on Twitter last Thursday but I thought I’d bring it over here as well to catch non-Twitterers but also to put together some of my ideas/questions.

I’ve actually got two flat walls that would be perfect for wall planters and the like but I’m going to focus on the bigger one first. It’s on the greenhouse level of our garden and has a super narrow (about a foot wide) bed at the bottom of it. I intended to grow beans and peas in the bed last year – trained up the wall – but the slugs put an end to that. Courgettes grew quite happily in it after all the peas got eaten but I think from this year onwards, it’ll work better as shrubby-herb bed (especially as it means I don’t have to put those elsewhere now). Since they won’t climb up, there will be a lot of vertical height going spare. More of an issue for when I reach the planting stage but if anyone’s interest, the wall is east facing, receiving sun until about 1-2pm.

So what can I use for planters? There are lots of different planters available to buy – in all sorts of materials – but they seem to fall into a few general categories:

• shelves – from basic wood to fancy wrought iron curves & cages. Even the flatter, plainer shelves, usually have a rim or lip around the sides so pots don’t get blown out or down. For use with separate pots.
• window boxes – wall mounted troughs which, unlike the shelves, are planted into directly.
• half moon wall planters – semi-circular troughs a cross between window boxes and hanging baskets.
• hanging baskets – suspended away from the wall on a strong bracket or a hook. A few levels can be hung together like rainchains.
• “floating” pots – either like this lead one from Gardeners World, this integrated hooks/trellis arrangement or just pots on hooks. Some, like the lead one, have pots fixed in position, whereas others can be moved around – for example, pots with individual hooks attached can be put anywhere on a trellis.
• bags – suspended bags filled with soil, with holes cut into the (randomly) bag for the plants. Felt pocket hangers are a cross between the floating pots and these bags. Some bags (like better feather duvets) are divided into different compartments so the soil doesn’t all slump to the bottom – but this does restrict root growth.
• complex living wall systems – patented growing secrets! Lots of different designs/methods – some of them seem to be grid structures filled with compost, others structured bags behind trellis type things, others still who knows? possibly pure magic.

I certainly can’t afford a fancy living wall system but even filling the space with purpose-built troughs/window boxes, wall planters and hanging baskets would cost more than I’d like. (I do have some that I can repurpose from elsewhere in the garden but I’ll have to replace those containers somehow or I won’t be adding to my overall growing space. Some are also self-watering which would be beneficial). As always, I’ll keep an eye out on eBay/Freegle for giveaways but in the meantime, I guess I need to get making…

A cracking start to Spring

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 22 March 2011 in chickens, growing, making | 3 comments

Oh what a beautiful day!

I know yesterday was officially the first day of Spring but it was a usual sit-at-computer rush-off-to-rehearsal day for me, whereas I got out in the Spring sunshine today. I’d decided to have a day away, or at least largely away from my computer – and couldn’t have scheduled it better weather-wise.

We had our first breakfast al fresco – sitting on the sun trap of a balcony. The idea of having breakfast on a balcony was one of the things that sold the house to us – the balcony faces into the woods and it’s a gorgeous view, even with the trees still leafless:

(The two horizontal strips of green at the bottom of the photo are just over the stream at the bottom of the garden – it’s wild garlic. There is *so much* wild garlic in the woods – and thankfully plenty in places not often frequented by dogs.)

After breakfast, I cleaned out the chicken coop and since I was working hard, I thought some of the chickens should be busy too – I put Lime & Green to work in the portable run I made the other week, weeding one of the veg beds. They worked like troopers…

Except for when they got distracted by a dried leaf caught in the wire.

(By the way, since it was sunny, both cats wandered down into the garden, saw the girls in the portable run, thought their luck was in so crouched down – then realised the chickens were a. bigger than them b. had sharp beaks and c. had bigger claws so slunk off to continue their sun worship elsewhere. It was funny to watch them go through the exact same actions.)

Potatoes, seedlings, big bulldogs & have-a-go bullycats

Posted by louisa on Thursday 17 March 2011 in growing | 8 comments

I’ve been really careful, well, kinda careful this year to not overwhelm myself with seedlings.

It’s a bit of a balancing act, isn’t it? Ensuring that you sow enough to get adequate germination and to survive the tribulations of growing into seedlings, being transplanted and being put somewhere that ninja slugs might reach them (nevermind late frost snaps, being sat on by the dog or a myriad of diseases and other pests) – BUT not sowing too many that it’ll overwhelm your available resources (including time and space).

Last year, I accidentally grew way too many squash and nearly all the rest of my veggies suffered as a result – I’m keen not to make that mistake this year so have been cautious when it comes to buying and planting. Or at least I thought I had been – even though I’d resisted the cheap large bags of seed potatoes I’d seen, the small amount of seed potatoes I have bought are going to go further than I thought.

This afternoon I’ve planted out some Swift potatoes – which apparently provide small but very early spuds – and used up a third of my existing potato containers/bags — and I’ve still got another six varieties chitting and nearly ready to plant out. Admittedly I’ve only got a small amount of each variety but still, by my maths, I’ll need at least another eight to ten containers/bags for them all. It’s times like these that I really wish I had an allotment or at least beds that were deep enough/wide enough to warrant rows.

Any recommendations for potato-growing containers/bags or stuff to reuse for said containers?

I’ve also asked on Twitter for recommendations for topsoil and/or compost suppliers – we just don’t have any spare soil in this garden and our compost heaps aren’t pumping out enough of the brown stuff just yet. If anyone else has any suggestions around Leeds/Bradford or offering affordable delivery from elsewhere, I’d love to hear them :)

Aside from the potatoes, it’s all go in my seedling nurseries – I’ve got stuff that needs a warm environment (tomatoes, peppers, chillis, squash, cucumber) in the propagator, and stuff that doesn’t mind the cold (early lettuce, broad beans and after being reminded about them by Gillian, radishes) in the greenhouse. Lots and lots of green shoots popping up. But hopefully not too many of any one thing ;)

The jostaberry canes are planted out too – although that little job was interrupted by a big bulldog coming over to meet Lily-dog and Boron the old, toothless cat deciding he wanted to fight said big bulldog to prove his manliness or something. Thankfully the bulldog is good around cats so just tried to get out of the way of Boron’s swats but a scary few minutes for me all the same!

More fruit bushes-to-be – jostaberry

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 16 March 2011 in growing | 4 comments

A while ago, I said I was done planting fruit bushes for the year, then about a week later I remembered I had some honeyberry bushes on order but once they were planted up, that was it re: fruit bushes for the year. Oh, and there was also the then on order, now planted out cherry tree – definitely nothing else. Definitely, definitely, definitely.

The magnificently wonderful John B popped around last night, bringing with him some of his damson wine (which my John has declared amazing), a jar of his homemade “John’s Spicy Sausage Sauce” (which we shall use to spice up our sausages ASAP) and some jostaberry canes.

I hadn’t heard of jostaberries before John mentioned them to us a while ago – they’re a cross between gooseberries and blackcurrants. Early on, they have the taste & transparency of gooseberries but they darken to end up like big blackcurrants. They also have rather big spikes on them.

He pruned his bushes at the weekend and I won’t be able to plant the cuttings until tomorrow so they might need a bit of TLC – or might just flat out not regrow – but it’s worth a shot.

I plonked them in a tub of water when they arrived and we decided it looked like the worst, most painful, most relationship-ending bouquet of flowers ever — unhappy Valentine’s day. Hopefully though, they’ll eventually make us berry happy indeed.