Microcosm
I am leaving all of the windowboxes in place for the next inhabitants of my house, and so yesterday I moved the surviving plants from there into pots that I can take away with me. The windowbox wall...
View ArticleSwimming with the fishes
At some point in the future, I would like a garden with a water feature. A natural swimming pool would be my first choice, but seems unlikely. A fish pond would be lovely – as long as I was also...
View ArticleComfrey: the permaculture plant
One of the plants that I was keen to transplant from the garden to the allotment was comfrey (Symphytum officinalis). I had several plants, which I grew from root cuttings several years ago. Some were...
View ArticleFirst day of spring
If you haven’t already seen it, check out Google’s doodle for today. To celebrate the spring equinox, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, they’ve got a little cartoon human watering the...
View ArticleRods and cones
One of my exes, a biker, had a peculiar approach to work-life balance. He refused to work on any day that was sunny, dry and warm – the conditions in which the roads got sticky enough for him to ‘get...
View ArticleThe ice cream shed
My allotment doesn’t have a shed. I wish it did, because it would be somewhere to keep the rake (which is too long for my tool store) and to shelter from the rain. But on my fantasy allotment I...
View ArticleGrow! Harvest! Eat!
“We grow! We harvest! We eat!” mural in the Exotic Garden at Ryton organic gardens I haven’t felt much like writing over the last few weeks. I haven’t felt like doing much of anything. It took Ryan and...
View ArticleAnd we’re in
Ryan and I have (finally!) moved into our new house! And, whilst we had the use of a van, we collected all of the tall plants from the allotment. So the first refugees from my old garden have arrived...
View ArticleWhy I’m breaking up with my allotment
I wrote (but didn’t publish) this back in May, when the weeds took over the allotment and I realised I didn’t have the time and energy that would be required to get it back into shape. At the time I...
View ArticleBye bye allotment
I had a few days off last week, and part of the plan was to pay my final visit to the allotment. I hadn’t been since November, and wasn’t sure what I would find. Would someone have helped themselves to...
View ArticleWhat would a resilient UK garden look like?
A little while ago I was talking about the recent extended period in my life when, for a variety of reasons, I was unable to garden. As it happens, I have been reading The Resilient Gardener, by Carol...
View ArticleTendrils: 151218
I received a marketing email today, warning me that my autumn-sown broad beans [US: fava beans] will be rotting away in the soil in this unseasonal December weather we’re having. They won’t, because I...
View ArticleGlutbusters: January 2016
So far we’ve had a very mild (wet, and wild!) winter – there may have been a second frost in the garden whilst we were away over New Year, but other than that it has just been dank and damp....
View ArticleHow to store tubers for planting
The arrival of some ulluco (Ulluco tubers) tubers from Incredible Vegetables left me pondering how best to store them until it’s time to plant them out (after the risk of frost has passed, in spring)....
View ArticleA shrub-free Sunset Strip
With the UK battered by one winter storm after another, it has been hard to find time to get out in the garden. If it isn’t peeing down with rain then the ground is still sodden from the last time it...
View ArticleThe Wood Shop
Last week I was talking about my plans to turn the Sunset Strip – a roadside section of my garden – into a mini allotment. After I’d dug out the shrub roots, Ryan and I went out to check on the...
View Article2016 Garden Plan
Ever since we started building this new garden, I have been pondering what I would grow in 2016 – it’s first season as a complete (I hope!) garden. It has been hard to decide. During my garden-free...
View ArticleSpot the difference: fences and beds
What the front garden looked like when we moved in! (See the rest of the first garden photos) It has been rare this winter for free time, spare energy and decent weather to all come at once. Yesterday...
View ArticleFree vegetable seed tapes from Suttons
Suttons have developed a new range of vegetable seed tapes that make seed sowing and crop planning easier than ever. With their Seed Tapes Collection – Spring & Autumn, you can feed a family of 4...
View ArticleGrow your own duck food
An example of what not to feed to ducks! Many years ago, long before my gardening obsession began, I spent a season or two living in a ground floor flat in Newbury that had patio doors that opened onto...
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