Landshare/Garden Update

Oh it's been a while, hasn't it? I'm rubbish at this blogging-regularly thing. Half the time I take the pictures, then forget to write it up.

Anyway, as it's now nearing the end of August, it's time for an update on my landshare experience and garden.

Landshare

Well the potatoes came up nicely, then they started wilting horribly - I think they were being eaten by slugs. We've also had strange weather - it's been either really hot or really wet, so I don't think that has helped much.  Only one of the leeks that were planted survived (well, one and a half) and the carrots didn't do very well, probably because the soil is hard and it's been so dry.

It was strange because it wasn't my vegetable patch - it was J and K's, so while I would have liked to put down some (organic) pest control, they didn't, and it wasn't really my place to interfere. Despite all the problems, there were a few mini-harvests, which looked like this:

 This is right out of the ground - no cleaning. Which shows how dry the ground was. The carrots were tiny and a lot of them had been eaten by something (ants maybe??), so I just ate the remainder raw and they were very sweet and delicious. The potatoes were also really tasty. Onions were small and mainly ended up in salads.

J+K came round a couple of weeks ago with a bit of a bombshell - J had been offered a job elsewhere in the country, so they were leaving. =( Bit of a shame as they were nice, but ah well. They've left me the last surviving leek.

There's another, baby, one too and I'm not sure if it'll grow or just die, but at least this one looks healthy.

I've decided that I'm going to give the veg garden a bit of a go myself, now, so I'm not reoffering my garden on landshare just yet. We'll see how I cope alone!


Herb Garden

The herb garden has been doing really well. The fennel is huge, the parsley and sage are both doing really well as well. The coriander bolted quite quickly, as it was so hot, so I let it go to seed and have been drying it out, hoping to plant some of the seed.

As well as the planted bed, I also have two large pots of mint (I dug those out of the ground and into pots as I'd heard they would take over everything). One large pot of oregano and a pot of feverfew.

Vegetables

My step-grandad   gave me some veg when I went to visit him - a tomato plant and two squash/courgette plants. I shoved them in a grow bag on the patio and here's how they are doing now:

I had the first tomato today as one lone one had ripened - it was really tasty. Lots more on the plant which are startin to ripen now.

Been having problems getting the courgettes to pollinate. I've tried hand-pollinating, but so far only have one successful courgett growing:

Nearly ready to eat this one =D

I've been regrowing celery scraps as well, which seems to be going well. Maybe I'll blog about that later when I have a successfully grown one!

So, the plan is to dig over/weed the landshare plot and maybe plant some winter crops.

Making my herb garden

I've been dreaming of a herb garden since I moved into my house and with J&K growing vegetables in my garden now, I was inspired to stop dreaming and get on with it lol.

I'd booked a week off work, and planned to spend some of that doing this. Day one was sunny, warm and the ground was dry and hard as nails lol. I dug about half of the patch and then had to stop for the day.

Day two was drizzling, but I was determined to carry on, and actually the moisture seemed to make the digging easier and I got the rest of it dug up. The ground here is very clay-y, with flint and chalk stones. So after I'd dug the patch out and de-turfed it, I spent a good couple of hours going through it with a fork, trying to break up all of the chunks of clay.

Finally, I got to a point where it was manageable. Still quite lumpy, but I was running out of energy. I dug in a few buckets of compost.

I could do with some edging, but I'm trying to re-use and make-do rather than buying new things and I'd already spent money on the herbs. Hopefully I can get hold of some wood from somewhere. =)

Herbs planted. There's a bit of space for the oregano to go once the cuttings have taken root (hopefully lol).

Top row is spearmint, garden mint, chives (2 lots), coriander (2 lots). Middle row is lavender, fennel, thyme, basil (2 lots, one is very very tiny). Bottom row is rosemary (2 lots, larger one looking a bit worse for wear, I'm hoping it will pick up now it has more space to grow), sage (1 purple, 1 green) and parsley (1 curly at the top and 1 italian flat).

I also potted up some wild strawberries. I went to visit my grandad yesterday, and he and his wife gave me a tomato plant and two squash/courgette (they weren't sure which was which) plants, so I'm planning to just get a grow-bag on the patio to stick those in.

Don't think my body will be able to handle anymore digging anytime soon. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and the day after I'd finished the herb patch, my right hand was pretty seized up and the fingers swollen. Worth it though. I'm very proud of my efforts and hopefully the oregano will just finish it off nicely. =D