All I want for Christmas this year is more time in the garden. Oh the pleasure that can be found in the idle pottering about of a summer evening, or the power harvesting of an autumn morning after the school run. I revert to childlike status, begging my family for “Just five more minutes” as […]
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I’ve become slightly obsessed with garden paths. Our original intention in the kitchen garden was to use bark, but we plumped for shingle in the end on the basis that it might deter slug and snails and also that it sounds so nice and country when you crunch about on it. It’s a decision we’ve […]
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In mid-december last year, I answered the door to a harried-looking delivery man who declared (in a rather surly voice) that he had a 37 box delivery for me and that he had to be back on the road in minutes. I was enormously confused, I hadn’t ordered anything recently, and was on the verge […]
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I’ve long agreed with William Morris when he said that “…have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” When I say agree, I mean in a theoretical sense of course. The amount of clutter we appear to own boggles the mind. But I digress. Most of what […]
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In an effort to be more green I decided that I should use up the plastic plant labels I got as part of a gardening pack. However, disaster has struck! I wrote on them in what I believed to be indelible ink and it all appears to have washed off! This means that I am […]
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One of the main reasons we’ve always wanted our own smallholding was to be as self-sufficient as possible in terms of food. Given that I’ve always loved gardening, it seemed a natural next step. In London I used to grow as much food as I could in our tiny patio garden and so when moved […]
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The thought occurs that although we’ve had serious amounts of eggs from our hens so far this year, we haven’t had a single vegetable or fruit. Well, we have had fruit technically I suppose, in that we planted fruit trees and I harvested tiny fruits to stop them developing but obviously tiny immature apples etc […]
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Pumpkin before I’ve been generally pleased by the way that the pumpkins have grown vertically on a cane support in the garden. They actually haven’t fruited that much but that appears to have been down to poor pollination as I’ve had loads of tiny pumpkins develop and simply rot on the vine. Our tiny urban […]
Read MoreHerbs are surely the easiest (and most cheer-inducing) things you can grow in a small urban space. They are so much hardier than anything else in pots and you can keep harvesting them for ages. I remember having a small tomato plant back at university. I had bought it at a market where the woman […]
Read MoreSo having sowed some more carrots to spread the harvest a little and divided up the last of my shadier raised beds, it occurred to me that I should fill the gaps and plant the last of the square foot plots I’ve marked out. I have chosen two of my favourite winter vegetables, parsnips and […]
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London to Land Girl 