A berry silly decision; or how we killed our fruit bushes

August 25, 2018.Reading time 3 minutes.

Or, plant in haste, repent at leisure. As part of our whirlwind first dormant period on our smallholding, we planted more than 120 raspberry canes and more than 30 fruit bushes up in our new orchard. Amongst them were redcurrants, blackcurrants, white currants and many gooseberries. The idea was sound in principle. We would lure […]

Hanging baskets when you have nowhere left to hang them from

June 10, 2017.Reading time 3 minutes.

Poles holding a basket Unsurprisingly, the biggest challenge to the frustrated gardener when regarding their tiny urban garden with critical eyes is a lack of space. I’ve covered my fences and walls with wall planters, vertical garden planting bags and hung hanging baskets from every single supporting fence post and still I don’t think I […]

Hanging raspberry canes can’t (or at least it appears that way…)

April 14, 2017.Reading time 1 minute.

Pretty unimpressive before planting You know the old saying “too good to be true”? Well I think I may have fallen for the marketing hype on some raspberry plants to replace my old Raspberry canes. They claim to be trailing or tumbling canes that you can grow in hanging baskets. This makes me suspicious in the […]

Photo Friday: Bare raspberry canes attracting small creatures

April 3, 2015.Reading time less than 1 minute.

I have decided that every Friday I will post an image of the garden, without text. Hopefully it’ll become an interesting collection of images that chart the progress of the garden in 52 tiny details every year. This week’s is pretty self explanatory. Nobody is immune to raspberry canes!

Keeping on top of the raspberries (or alongside them at least…)

July 5, 2014.Reading time 1 minute.

The number of things that I have really not been that efficient at in the garden continues to increase. It didn’t occur to me, when planting my rows of raspberries in my raised sleeper beds, to string up a proper wire frame. This has resulted in having to tie new lines, made of string, across […]

Tying in raspberry canes (whether they like it or not)

June 12, 2014.Reading time 2 minutes.

Before 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 […]

Planting up raised beds

May 30, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

…or “How to decide what to grow”. The plan for the garden always included lots of pots on shelves and in a greenhouse but when it came to the raised beds themselves, I wanted to take advantage of their size to grow more substantial plants that would also cover the fences in time. My idea […]