Bring on the spring, that’s what I say. This past weekend was gloriously…well, grey. But on Friday afternoon the sun shone strongly and the cold, crisp air inspired me to get out into the garden with a sponge to clean up the greenhouse. I find that boring chores are much more likely to get done […]
Read MoreDahlia checking the garlic bulbs pre-planting Garlic takes a good long time to mature and so traditionally it would be planted on the shortest day to give it enough time to grow big and strong in time for harvest on the longest day of the year. And so it was that on the 21st of […]
Read MoreOh, puns. They prompted Caligula to roast a comedian alive and Bierce to sneer at them as a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” But my love of them, established early at the knee of my maternal grandfather, lives on. Puns and cracker jokes. I just can’t get enough, and […]
Read MoreWhen planning the garden, one of the things that worried me most about planting in pots was how easily they dry out, especially on hot days. It’s not good for root structures to get completely parched as the plant stems start to collapse inwards. So my initial thought was to purchase a rainwater butt and […]
Read MoreChives, primrose, buckleaf sorrel and mint When I think of a harvest of home-grown produce, I think of flat baskets brimming with vegetables. I think of pretty china bowls overflowing with fat, lucious sweet berries. I think of happy people climbing ladders in orchards to pick fruit. However, I started late this year. It’s already […]
Read MoreWhen we put a new kitchen into our last flat, one of the things I wanted to do was to make up for the lack of a garden. So I went to IKEA, bought about ten FINTORP racks and pots and had the workmen affix them to our tile splashbacks so that I could have […]
Read MoreBefore the canes My whole garden seems bent on telling me that I’ve started everything too late this year. The learning curve here is nothing if not steep. My six main raspberry canes in my raised beds have burst into life over the last month and so I thought it was probably about time that […]
Read MoreAs it was – stuffed with plants and seedlings As I’ve mentioned before, I do think that I was a bit naive in my seed sowing. I’ve ended up with an abundance of plants, certainly far too many for my poor little city garden and mini greenhouse to handle. So once again I’ve had to […]
Read MoreI think that I made a couple of mistakes this year in my naivete and general gung-ho enthusiasm to get the garden up and running as fast as possible. 1. I planted far too many seeds. I ordered goodness knows how many packets of seeds and therefore ended up with so many seedlings that there’s […]
Read MoreGreenhouse being built (two days of my life!) With so little space in the garden, I thought that I’d have to forgo a greenhouse, which would mean a sad lack of tomatoes. Blight is so common that I didn’t want to risk growing tomatoes outside. Most of the small greenhouses I was looking at weren’t […]
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London to Land Girl 