With all the wet weather of the last 24 hours it seems hard to imagine that just a week ago I managed an afternoon gardening. Most of the time that we've lived in this house (over a year now!) I've been either pregnant or juggling a small baby. Neither completely prevented gardening, but when the garden was such a blank canvas that most of the work was heavy stuff it did mean that I didn't get to do much. Mr C has done a fantastic amount of work out there to turn it into (half) a proper garden with borders (have I told you all about that yet? Possibly not!) so I can actually ... read more
Harvest
Finally an opportunity to spend some time in the garden today actually doing some gardening. I'm delighted to say that we were also able to harvest all the carrots that I grew from seed. The courgette plants are still producing a few and some of the beetroots are also ready.For anyone interested the courgettes are Black Beauty and the carrots are Royal Chantenay Red. Both of these seeds came from the BBC Dig In campaign. Also in the picture is one of the first beetroots that we've harvested - a Boltardy one.Interestingly there is quite a bit of variety in the sizes of the carrots ... read more
Too much rain?
We've had some monsoon like rain here in St Albans these last few days. After all this hot weather the garden could certainly do with the water and our lawn is looking much greener than it has in months. I'm not too sure that the chilli seedlings that had been put out to harden off are quite as happy though. Their growth had stalled somewhat inside, but I get a funny feeling that they've just drowned now! ... read more
Potatoes and Tomatoes
It seems that not all our growing efforts are in vain this year after all. Our first attempt at growing potatoes was via a free kit that you could send off for from the BBC Gardeners' World Magazine. The kit contained Vales Emerald seed potatoes and also a patio bag to grow them in. It really was as simple as filling the bag with compost, putting the seed potatoes in and ensuring that they got plenty of water. This afternoon we decided to see what the bag contained and we were pretty content with our results. Hopefully we'll get to eat them some time this ... read more
Not exactly a bountiful harvest…
... but better than nothing! I'm also hopeful that there are more courgettes still to come. ... read more
Escape to River Cottage
Somehow, and I'm not entirely sure how, I realised a while back that I'd never actually seen the original series of River Cottage. I also recently had a birthday - cue a very unsubtle hint to Mr C for a birthday present. Escape To River Cottage covers Hugh's original move to Dorset and his first attempts at self-suficiency. It's amusing looking back and seeing him tackle things in a slightly naive manner when he would do exactly the same things today very confidently. In a way I found that there was actually a lack of information about some of the things ... read more
Getting back to “normal”
Little Miss C is eight weeks old today. Eight weeks! Where has the time gone. From a small baby who came into the house and did little more than sleep, eat and fill her nappy, I am instead looking down at a bigger baby playing on her play mat, making noises, hitting the toys hung above her and occasionally breaking into a smile too. The transformation has been amazing and it seems that every day there is some small change that we can marvel over.Now that we're both getting used to each other we're learning to live with each other pretty well. I'm incredibly lucky as she's not a ... read more
First pea harvest
Our veg plot has come along in leaps and bounds recently, even more so when I look back at how it was a couple of months ago (then again where have the last couple of months gone???) Being so busy that I don't have time to check on it every day means that when I do go and take a look I am always amazed at just how much things have sprung up. Keeping on top of the weeding and generally keeping the plot tidy has been a tad difficult of late, but we are at least reaping the benefits from our first attempts at growing our own. Over on the right hand side of the ... read more
Home grown salad
More photos and less words are what is needed in blog posts here at the moment. The first "harvest" from our veg plot as served up for dinner the other night. So much more satisfying than having bought a bag of the stuff from the supermarket - and tastier too! ... read more
Grow your own update
Veg production seems to be starting off rather well here. Above are the courgettes happily growing from the free seeds I got from this year's BBC Dig In campaign. They're starting to take over this part of my kitchen, but I'm just waiting for the last frost to be over before planting them out. The rest of the veg plot is looking pretty good too. From the left there are potatoes hopefully starting to grown from seed potatoes in the bag on the paving. The random assortment in the back left hand corner of the raised bed is the contents of the magic grow your own box that I ... read more