Do you remember my initial work on my veg plot when we moved in? Well, I'm afraid that on a first glance it doesn't look much different now. The dark pile on top is "compost" that Mr C extracted from the compost bin that was at the house when we moved in. I use the term "compost" loosely though as having looked at it there seems to be quite a bit of non-compostable stuff in there including some plastic. I need to get my gloves on and have a good sort before digging it in to the bed.In the foreground though something is actually growing in there. By the time I'd ... read more

Friday night's Gardeners' World reminded us that this is the time of year to plant bulbs for next Spring. Mr C and I made the most of a recent special offer at B&Q to buy some bulbs, but we hadn't yet got round to actually putting them in the ground yet.We only had a short time available on Saturday morning in the garden, but we made the most of it to make a start planting the bulbs we had brought. We made a start with some snowdrops that we planted in the grass around the base of a couple of what we believe to be damson trees in the garden. There are ... read more

As I wrote a while back I've been making very small steps towards being self sufficient for a while. Now that I've got a garden it should be somewhat easier. One thing that I was keen to do was try my hand at growing some sort of fruit, but having taken a look at the contents of our new garden it seems I may already be a step ahead of where I thought I was. The apple tree outside the log cabin was obvious (even to us!) but the others gave us a bit more to research. (Cooking apples we think based on the look on Mr C's face when he took an exploratory bite!) ... read more

Apologies for the blogging break. Returning to work has sucked me into the corporate world (not a nice place) for this last week or so and finding time to do anything else has been a tad difficult.Following the comments back on my question about identifying things in the garden I've decided to follow Mrs Nesbitt's suggestion and see if anyone reading this can help.So, question number one. All around the edge of the decking and the steps up to the decking is this. A few people seem to think that it may be related to a strawberry plant, but no one is totally sure. I realise ... read more

I promise that I'll blog about something different very soon, but this has to be another gardening post I'm afraid.We're progressing quite well, but one thing is constantly foxing us. How are we supposed to identify those things that were already in the garden when we got here? I can recognise some of the more basic thing - grass, dandelions, bind weed etc, but we're now at the stage where I'll come to something when clearing a bed where I stop and try to work out of it's a weed or something that I should be leaving in.Based on the simple information of it has leaves ... read more

Now that I've got the garden I've been planning for for ages it's almost hard to know where to start! The garden is very much a blank canvas so although there are plenty of weeds to sort out the general lack of flower beds meant that there was very little that had to be done straight away. One exception to that was the area that I quickly identified as a possibility for my first veg plot. I didn't need the gardening books to tell me that the first thing I needed to do here was clear the site of all the weeds and rubble. The previous owner had kindly left behind ... read more