Come and see what I’ve been up to!

Thought it was time to have a little catch-up with all things gardening as I’ve been doing little bits here and there. The featured picture, by the way, is what I saw outside a local shop last week and thought it looked lovely so of course, I had to share it!

At home, I decided to try a couple of experiments. I kept hearing about ‘growing new veg from old’ so I thought I’d try it with 2 pak choi I had. I put the cut bottoms of them into a tray of water – and they grew roots! I’d also heard one of the easiest ways to get new basil was to take a cutting and leave it in water until roots formed. So I did.

I don’t think the pack choi is going to be as big as normal but they are growing daily! I’ll call that a success.

In other news, I finally got round to cutting down the Autumn raspberries! I have them growing along the side of the shed (great tip there by the way if you also have a small garden like I do). I get a LOT of fruit from these and they look fantastic lined up against the shed, the mix of colours makes me very happy.

I’ve kept some of the best ones and stripped them of the little twiggy bits so I can use them for plant supports. I then took the old compost I’d collected from my pots in the polytunnel and spread it around to tidy it up and hopefully give them a bit of a feed. There is new growth showing which you can see in my next YouTube video when I get it put up!

I have other garden related news: THE FENCE PANEL IS UP!

I had to used everything to block the gap so Scooby wouldn’t get out again! This is obviously the next bit of the garden to get sorted.

After that, I was feeling ready to tackle the allotment for an hour or so. I must admit, it’s looking pretty good. There are still a couple of areas needing worked on but nothing so drastic that I’m stressed about it – all that cold Winter gardening was worth it in the end!

When we got to the allotment, the people behind us had what looked like a bonfire going – there was a lot of smoke. When I went onto the plot I could see the lady was using one of those weed burner tools and I admit I was a little worried in case the flames spread my way. I am happy to report they just burned a little bit and left a trail of black, dead-looking leaves. I admit, I have my doubts about that working on couch grass as it has so much growth under the soil so time till tell. I’ve never used one of those gadgets so don’t know anything about them.

I weeded the garlic in the polytunnel and watered it so it’s happy now. Since I got a small tunnel put up in the garden at home, I can afford to use some of the indoor space for garlic this year, which is just as well as the outside stuff isn’t looking so good.

After I did the weeding in the polytunnel, I went back to working on the last big bay. We got the main part finished so I’m happy with that. There is just the bit along one side to do: I emptied a lot of home-made compost there and it’s full of chickweed. It’s very quick to remove so I’m not too worried about that. As least I’ve got good compost there I can use on the bay. I dumped it there as I knew it would be there for a while and the woman on the other side of the fence doesn’t weed much. In fact the one thing she did do was plant mint straight into the ground so now it’s spreading into my plot. Tip: plant mint into a pot – NEVER straight into the ground unless you only want to grow mint, as it will take over. She didn’t get the memo.

I think you are up-to-date now. I haven’t talked about my seed sowing yet – I will soon. I’m using a couple of tricks to help with germination which I’ll show you in an upcoming post. Until next time – Happy gardening!