Avocado

There is a place a short drive from our house that has fresh organic produce for sale, and local where possible. I try and buy from there as much as possible, meat as well as veggies, they often have nice ripe avocados. Who doesn’t ever want to try and grow something just for the hell of it, put a pit, stone or seed in some soil and see what happens, I did this with my organic avocado pit and check this out!

The leaves are huge and I love it and am very excited. It’s just been on my kitchen window sill. I’m going to pot it on soon and maybe look at how to look after it and see if it one day might bear fruit. I have a polytunnel to keep it in so who knows?! 🙂

Advertisement

Beans Etc.

My garden is flourishing, mostly things I haven’t planted, but it’s full of life!

Look at these beans, they are ones that seeded themselves last year and they are magnificent! There are so many bean pods on them. They are one of our favourite vegetables so we are very happy, not quite ready to eat yet though.

These are beans I sowed in the spring, they are doing very well too, so we will have a succession of them through the summer. As you can see we have a few corn poppies around as well.

The green house is looking good, here are aubergines, hot chillies and some sweet red peppers just coming through.

I also have more chillies, and a few tomatoes still to be planted up.

Even though I wasn’t able to tend to my garden as much as I would have liked, it is doing well and I have lots to be greatful for 🙂

First Sowing of the Year

As you may know, I always like to get the sowing of broad beans in early. The earlier I sow, the more I can grow and you do need a lot of plants to get a decent portion of beans. The seeds in the paper cup are left over from last year and have been sitting around in the damp, but I’m giving them a chance, you never know. The others I’ve chosen for quantity and they were bought in the autumn when I sowed my first lot straight into the garden.

I have sowed twelve of each and I’m looking forward to the first signs of growth, probably three weeks.

The ones I sowed in November are somewhere near that polytunnel that’s in need of repair (wind damage!). The water has receded now but who can say whether the broad beans will still germinate. I love the anticipation 🙂

Shiny Greenhouse etc.

it’s a really beautiful day today, if a little chilly, but it encouraged me out into the garden. I love being out in my garden and doing things to make it look nice. I knew one of the things I had to do was to finish cleaning the green house, so I got on with that first. Now it’s not only is it shiny on the outside…..

…..it’s (mostly) shiny on the inside. Which means I can actually see through the glass 🙂

I did some cutting back and sweeping up

and tidied up the rose arch.

I took a sneaky peak at the seeds I sowed about three weeks ago and there’s signs of life.

I love to see things growing, I find it such a blessing, I can’t wait to sow some more 🙂

Preparing for New Year

We were having a few sunny days so I decided I need to wash the green house, the glass is getting very green with lichen and such like. But there was a necessary job beforehand which was to get all the debris that had accumulated around it during autumn and winter. Now it is all nice and clear 🙂

It was too late in the day to start washing the green house, so that’s a job for the next sunny day. It was good to get outside, put my washing out…

and dig up the last of my carrots. They are enormous but very sweet and delicious 🙂

Broad Beans

My little Almanac also tells me I can sow broad beans under glass so I’ve now done that.

I love broad beans so I was eager to start them early to lengthen the growing season. I know a lot of people don’t like then but grown yourself and picked young, they’re delicious.

I’ve sown two types, one I got from the market sold to me by the 1/2 pint and a dwarf variety I got on Line. I’ve never sown them this early before so we shall see what happens.

I did have company while I was doing it 🙂

A small issue that happened yesterday because of all the rain we’ve had. Fortunately this doesn’t happen often!

A Small but perfect Harvest

I do love growing things, it makes me very happy. Here’s an example of my small but perfect harvest 🙂

Me and Mr O. love broad beans so they are a must. I’ve never grown the yellow beans before and they have done really well.

Delicious cucumber, really sweet,

and my first ripe chilli is being used tonight in dinner!

News From My Greenhouse

I just realised that I haven’t reported on how things are doing in my green house. Well they are doing grand!

I have two lovely aubergine plants with fruit and more flowers,

four chilli plants doing amazing, full of fruit,

and twelve tomato plants, several different varieties, performing quite well.

I am so enjoying growing. All my plants are being fed with organic seaweed plant food. 🙂

This weekend

I know I’m a bit late in telling you what I did this weekend but, you know, you have to do things to create your simple life! 🙂

Anyway, I made a Battenberg Cake

and a Garden and home journal.

And today I made this plan of our garden with the help of the plans for the garden work!

I now think I deserve a cup of tea (and a piece of Battenberg) 🙂

New Garden

Well, not new garden really!

We decided that the garden needed to have some sort of design to help me manage it better. So we have had some garden work done to break it up a little. This is partly why I wasn’t blogging last year because there wasn’t much happening other than ground work.

The main thing was to put paths in to facilitate different garden areas.

This also has provided me with some more garden beds.

One of the things I’m most pleased with is my new rose arch!

Starting as I meant to go on, I planted some spring bulbs in the autumn when the work was finished and I am now starting to watch them peep through the soil 🙂