Be Excellent To Each Other

Oh, thank you! Some of them are a bit small, but they certainly scrubbed up well. I was worried they’d be a bit grotty before I cleaned them up, but once the outer layer is off for the outer layers to dry and cure they start looking a lot prettier.

Just a quick update. Everything is growing as hoped, I guess, apart from the brassicas which got nommed.

Potatoes we’ve harvested two of our six summer potato plantings, and I’ve sown three winter potato plantings too.



Carrots are brilliant again this year. I think Bean has magic carrot growing skills.



We have had amazing peas. They cropped heavily forested six weeks straight then died off, but then put out a load of new green growth and are cropping again.

We’ve had beetroot and onions and garlic.

I’m keeping an eye on the sweetcorn. I don’t know if o have a timing issue with the variety I have (Swift) with the males appearing so long before the females, so I’ll have to check the cob formation in a fortnight.

Tomatoes have been brilliant. I’ve got a few definite favourites to grow again next year, and I’m going to try and cross pollinate a tomato next year.



The pumpkins are growing well, too. The one at the front measured over a metre in circumference today



There’s other stuff, but it’s fun, and quite comforting at the current time.

Lovely Mimi

Really envious of your potatoes and tomatoes, and those carrots look like something you would see in an advert or cookery show or something.

Amazing!

That all looks awesome mimi! I'm so jealous!

I just want the t-shirt

Excellent harvest Mimi!

Solid.

Lovely colourful photos too.

How long would you say you have spent, and continue to spend on the garden?

Part of what's holding me back from trying is a feeling I've already a bit overcommitted, a realisation I already have a a lot of other tings to be responsible for... plus I think a little bit of inherent laziness

Hmmm, difficult question. As all of my tomatoes are in pots during the heatwave I’ve had to water them every day, but usually I’d water them every third day. The stuff in the beds rarely needs watering, even during the heatwave I’ve only watered most of it once a week.

On top of that I usually do a little thing at lunchtime. That might be pruning the tomatoes, or just tidying something up. Usually I just wander around and look at stuff.

The busiest time is definitely March, because that is seed sowing time, and looking after baby plants.

You could just get a couple of buckets (97p in B&Q) and buy a couple of tomato plants next year (also B&Q) and with a couple of sticks see how you go. I don’t beat myself about things if I let them die. I had a bit of a MH blip earlier in the year and just didn’t want to look after some flower plants I’d grown from seed, and they died, and so I chucked them away and concentrated on what I was enjoying (which at that time was cleaning plant pots and tools).

I have a few more pictures.

Some potatoes. These are Jazzy potatoes (I bought them solely because they made me think of @goddess Jasmine and I’m so glad I did because they are stellar and I’ll definitely grow them again).



The Heinz tomatoes are just excellent, too


And the pumpkins are all starting to ripen.

We decided to harvest the pumpkins today as they seem nicely cured and the skins have hardened, so they’ll store for 3 - 6 months +. These were grown as an afterthought really, just as I saw the seeds in Morrisons garden centre bit, but Darwin is so proud of them. They’re great fun.

They look awesome. Are they eaters or carvers?

We have what appear to be pumpkins growing in our new veg beds. No idea exactly, and where they've come from is a mystery! The beds are filled with home-made compost and we don't eat pumpkins...

These are a carving variety because I’m super allergic to pumpkins/squash. If I touch the flesh all of the skin that it’s touches starts to peel off. It’s gross. Actually, I touched just the outside of the pumpkins last week and all my skin started peeling, so it must be the outside to some degree as well, but I’ve been wearing gloves today and all is fine. We have them in the house at Halloween and it’s no worry, but I wouldn’t risk trying to eat them. Oddly, I was talking to a friend about the pumpkin allergy and she has the same so maybe it’s a common allergy.

I’ve just bought 100 saffron crocus bulbs, which should yield me just under one whole gram of saffron. I’ll be rich beyond my wildest dreams in no time!

I thought it’d be a nice little thing to be able to say I grew, though, and will come back each year of course.

https://www.farmergracy.co.uk/products/ ... s-bulbs-uk

Couldn’t afford the £770 for the 10,000 bulbs, sadly, so 100 will have to do. There’s free shipping on for the next couple of days at Farmer Gracy, BTW (code FRSH) in case anyone else wants some saffron crocuses or whatever else.

The first of my saffron crocuses have popped up. I should get about three strands from each bulb that blooms. It said that there likely wouldn’t be a huge yield in the first year, but they’re looking like most of them are going to bloom, and they naturalise really easily, apparently, so I should get more and more each year.

Look: actual saffron strands!

I’m not sure if this is of interest to anyone but me, but my little saffron growing idea is really stepping up a gear now. Today was the biggest single day harvest so far. I was told not to expect much by way of a harvest this first year, but the saffron flowers are doing so well. I’m drying them in little piles so that I can put them in little jars when they get to the right stage. I might even have enough to give a little jar to Ma at Christmas.

Cor! Just caught up with this thread, amazing work, Mimi!

With your clearly magical spot you could become the UK baroness of the stuff.

Hehe, thanks both! It’s a happy little thing going on in the garden now that many crops have come to an end. I’m going to get a herb bed put out in spring as I bought one of these and thought I could sow a different herb in each of the sections: 12-Section Covered Potager Growhouse https://amzn.eu/cs0Fc31 It seemed like an amazing price.

The saffron crocuses are in large patio containers, Bik. We have a very heavy clay here, so I’m amending the soil as we work the garden, but that will be an ongoing project over many years.

The actual saffron crocuses smell stunning.

That saffron looks great! You should make lussebullar! https://www.scandikitchen.co.uk/recipe- ... ucia-buns/

I’ve read about these buns! (One of my Christmas hobbies is reading books on various holiday traditions). I’ll give them a go.

Our Japanese quince sure can quince. Probably 10kg.

Some of these things are as big as apples!

Wow that's loads. Will you be able to make all those into something?

Last year Helen stewed them down and made ice cubes for adding to... Er, I forget what she said. They're all still in the freezer because they get forgotten about. Quite lucky I haven't fed them to the dog really. Or maybe I have and that's why she wasn't keen at first.

With this many we may be on for a few jars of quince jelly though.

That’s an incredible number. Are those all from one tree?

Yesterday we set up the metal bed that I won in a competition. I de used to put it on the boundary with next door as she grows quite a wild garden, and has everything covered with English Ivy.



It’s strangled out the trees, and when we moved in there was about 100-150cm depth of ground cover ivy that had crept through to our side, right down tve left side of the garden, and the planting in that area had died, I think because of it.



We’ve been pushing the ivy back bit by bit since we moved in but there was an area half was up the garden that we were going to tackle next, when I happened to win the raised bed.

We cleared some space for the bed, and put down some weed membrane under the bed to stop it growing up through the bed.



I don’t usually use weed membrane on my raised beds, but this specifically has the ivy to contend with.



Once the bed was constructed (we went with the longest, narrow configuration with the panels, we used a sort of hugelkulture style filling, which saved a lot of money and dealt with a lot of the woody garden waste we chopped back. So, layers of cardboard, logs, then small branches, and then (our lucky days) the tree surgeons were across the road so Russell went over to ask if they had any fresh woodchip, and they kindly brought two great big bags over. Look how pleased his little face is…



So we added that, and will add some manure and compost to fill the rest.



I’m going to put flowers in the back of it, around 40cm tall, and then in the front I’m going to put some strawberries. I have about 5-7 plants and ordered another 20, but they sent 28, so should get between 20-30 total, depending on how many take.

A really happy day for me today because in our Wildlife pond…

A little dream of mine, come true

Incredible that you've been able to attract flamingos.

Well, some residents are clearly very unhappy.

When we moved in we found LOADS of statues buried underground. We’ve just put them all out. Not the frog: Darwin bought him

Awesome

First garden snackums of the season.

I have hesitated to share this here, but I think it’s a safe and forgiving space, so please let me share with you my attempts at topiary.

We’ve got a few topiary areas in the garden. Two tall topiary topped trees, one a cube and one a sort of ‘umbrella’ sit to the left. Then a little further in we have a smaller standard topiary that when we moved in looked like four spheres. Due to the weather and illness last year it didn’t get its reshape, but it’s slow growing, so I thought maybe I could tackle it. I always take pictures of the process because they go on the gardening IG account I have to document the changes and upkeep. So here’s the before:



I started at the bottom, because the two orbs there looked to be the two that still had some definition for guidance.



So far, so spherical. But… hmm… be careful now. Have never noticed before but those orbs could start to look like balls (like balls if I’m not careful).

It will less like a pair of balls when I add the third sphere in, right?

Wrong.



Nooope. That is not going well. That third orb is wrong. Annoyingly a tiny bit of branch has died back on the left hand side and so the third sphere does not quite fill out as it should. Crap, crap, crap.

This is make or break now. If I can get the top bit right it will balance it out and make it look ok. It’s at the top so I can’t quite reach it as easily as the rest of the tree, so I need to concentrate. But it needs to be a perfect globe to stop it from looking like… It’s fine. I can fix this.



Bollocks.

Oh, cock.

Ban this sick filth.

Oh my.

We had Dr Zoidberg and his partner over at the weekend and I couldn’t breathe whilst I was showing them. Every time I started trying to tell them what happened I started wheezing with laughter.

It’s not often we get invited round to look at a dick in someone’s garden

If it helps, at first I thought you were aiming for Giant Topiary Breasts, rather than bollocks.

I'm going with: "No... but yes".

Also, I'm hugely enjoying this, Mimi, thank you. My mum has a very mature (lawn mowed, but otherwise trees and bushes largely running wild) garden, and I'm at the stage of roughly hacking at bushes and trees to keep them in check. I was proud that I managed to make one side of leylandii more or less square, but it's a complete mess. So you are way ahead of where I am.

You knew I was here

We had a black lace filling in a space in a border for several years, but it eventually died, so we removed it but couldn't decide what to put in its place.

I was going to seed the area with a Bee Bomb, but kept forgetting to buy one and then I saw something similar in B&M a couple of months ago, so I bought it, even though it was going to be a bit late to seed the area.

I kept it watered and protected it so the dogs wouldn't trample all over it, but nothing much seemed to be happening.

We've been away for a few days and when we got back found that there's some activity after all. I just hope it's not all weeds, but I suspect it might be.

What are you going to Agadoo if it is weeds?

We have, once again, neglected our garden and it's got a bit out of control, it looks a bit miserable and depressing to look at so we need to put in a big effort. We did quite a lot of weeding and some pressure-washing this weekend so that's cheered things up a bit.

It grows so quickly. We have a plan to rip up and chop out some bits. I'd like to do more, but lady T prefers to give things a gentle trim rather than hack them back.

I've also taken to burning the garden waste. It's just too much for the green waste bin, and taking it to the tip is both inconvenient and expensive.

Which thread is which? I can never be sure anymore. Let's go with this one.

Finally built out the chicken run roof on Saturday. We haven't found anyone that will charge less for delivery then actual roof yet so for now they have a pergola.

This was also the weekend the poultry place got their last batch of chickens for the year, so Thatch and Daub are learning to share with (top to bottom) Frenchie, Billy and Hughie.

Hughie is brilliant. Super inquisitive and friendly. Already eating from our hands, following us about, keen to try eating things that aren't the layers mash they've been on the whole time. Ended up flying onto both of our shoulders tonight as least stressful places to be.

Billy is tentative but following Hughie's lead.

Frenchie is a noisy nervous flappy tit, which is unfortunate because it's bringing out Daub's utter bully bellend tendencies (daub bring one of the existing chickens).

If this carries on I can see us leaving daub out for next doors cats or whatever else is passing by (a buzzard if we're lucky) because she's been a twat the entire 6 years we've had her but this is a new level.

Push a pineapple, obv.

The Bee Bomb patch is filling out, but I really must plant much earlier next year.



We also appear to have a rogue begonia in the front garden.



TBH, I wasn't really paying attention to the pattern of colours when I put these in, so there are only two white ones in this row and one of them just hasn't grown. Then again, it hasn't died, it's just dormant.



But we really like begonias. They take so little looking after, they last an incredibly long time and they always look really cheery.