Square foot gardening: Planting carrot seeds for the Easter Bunny with a toddler

March 30, 2017.Reading time 5 minutes.

An empty raised bed awaiting seeds is a yawning gulf of temptation to me, one that begs to be filled with any manner of plants. The problem is that when space is limited and the year is still too young to allow for the planting out of seedlings as per the carefully crafted urban garden […]

Sowing seeds with a toddler: Proper propagators

March 29, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

With the growing space that I used to use pre-baby occupied by a busy toddler who has more personal belongings than many Royals, I’ve been severely limited in how many seeds I can sow from scratch. I did have a very small greenhouse but walls of glass and busy bouncing boys didn’t really seem to […]

Blooming delicious: sowing edible flower seeds with a toddler

March 11, 2017.Reading time 4 minutes.

One of the nicest things about Spring has to be the promise of the growing season to come. I find myself genuinely excited by the appearance of tiny buds on stems and tiny seedlings peeping up above the earth for the first time. The outside world bursts with life and potential. With that in mind […]

Sow many plans, sow little time

April 8, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

On Easter Monday the lovely Mr Garlic helped me to do a whole morning of gardening. Because I’m stuck on the knee scooter with a broken foot (and my stupid scooter doesn’t fit into the side return), he was wonderful and shuttled back and forth with bags of soil and bean shoots and all sorts […]

The international language of seeds (or so I’d hoped)

April 6, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

Being a foreigner myself (albeit a bit of a fake one), I sympathise with anybody that comes to the UK and struggles to make themselves understood. Take, for example, my lovely yellow climbing French beans. Or haricots, if you will. They came with a pleasingly incomprehensible instruction illustration.You will laugh, oh experienced gardener readers, when […]

Enthusiasm for seeds must be genetic…

March 16, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

I am a total geek when it comes to seeds. One of the highlights of my shopping year is when the seed catalogues come out and I can sit down in the evening with a glass of wine and a stack of them to pore over and covet. Once they actually arrive (cue much joyous […]

The first seedlings have sprouted!

March 16, 2015.Reading time 1 minute.

Last week I was in a rush to take the GarlicBaby to the local aquarium. I was putting the babyseat into the taxi when I turned my ankle on an uneven bit of pavement and broke my foot. Apparently I have a Lisfranc injury, which is pretty appallingly bad when you consider that it happened […]