July 2, 2009

Tomato Flowers are Here

STeve @ 11:36 pm

I thought the day would never come!  We have had these plum tomato plants for months now and while they have actualy grown quite a bit over the last couple of weeks it is only now that I have spotted the first flower.  So we might have tomatoes after all.   The last week it has been very hot (heatwave warnings have been given, although if you ask me it is just summer!) and so each night the plants have had a good soaking.  I would think this mixture has been just what the tomato plants have wanted.

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June 28, 2009

Snapshot June 09

STeve @ 10:01 pm

Summer time is here, yeah!!!  It seems that the whole country is suffering from really bad thunder storms and yet we have not had any real rain for quite some time.   The back garden then is in full use with Tom and Jack, and in fact the kitchen table is outside on the decking for some real outside living.

A lot of work in the back garden before next weeks birthday tea for Tom and Jack.  The grass needs weekly cutting.   The patio is a mess with a lot of junk sitting on it at the moment, this is all on its way to the dump although I will be cutting the pallets up a bit as they are fantastic for various things in the garden.

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Finally Looked at the Back Bed

STeve @ 9:55 pm

This bed at the back of the garden has not really been touched for years and it really shows.  It is overgrown with grass and weeds and really is just somewhere where the cat sits all day.   So today I decided to finally tackle it a little bit and so as well as a lot of weeding and tarty things up I also removed the old wooden edging (which the weeds just love to hide in as it is hard to mow/strim longside it) and replaced with bricks.   I’ve had these bricks for years and edged the other flower bed in the back garden with them too.  Immediatly, although there are still no real flowers in the back bed, it has made the garden look a lot more looked after.

I again sowed some years old seeds, you never know…

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Cherries

STeve @ 9:46 pm

For a non fruiting cherry tree we are getting quite a lot of cherries this year!

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Old Seeds Sowed - Go Away Cat!

STeve @ 9:42 pm

The main flower bed in the back garden has not been touched for some months and was starting to look a bit unloved.  So I cleared away all the old and dead bluebell leaves from the other month, tidied things up and then was left with a couple of bear patches.   It is a probably a bit late in the year now but I thought I’d give it a go anyway and I sowed a number of flower seeds.   A mixture of packets that have been laying around for ages (some up to five years old), I sowed them all in the hope that maybe some will germinate and do something.    You never know.   Last year I left it pretty late to sow wild flower seed in this bed and they all came up with a great show and a lot are back this year too.  So fingers crossed once again.

Along with bear patches of newly sowed soil comes the ever present danger of the cat.  After his attack on the herbs in the grow bags I thought I would not take any chances.  It just so happened that our cherry tree could do with some of the smaller branches trimming, so trim I did, removed the leaves and have stuck in the ground over the sowed seeds with the aim of keeping the cat away.  We wait and see if it will be a success.

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June 25, 2009

Signs of Potato Flowers

STeve @ 9:07 pm

Watering each day and all looking good. Spotted signs of flowers.

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The Cat Tries to Stop our Herb Progress!

STeve @ 8:58 pm

Everything was looking good, you cannot quite see it here but all rows were showing seedlings.  Which means it was a bit of a disapointment when a couple of days later it looked like:

It seems that the cat thought that Jack’s seedlings looked like a nice place to dig!   A rather big setback so we went and bought some more seeds and sowed them again.  A bit of upset but Jack enjoyed re-sowing the seeds.   Quite happy at the result shown below:

All ready then for Jack’s re-sowed seeds to have another change of growing.  But by the afternoon, the cat had been back and this time the damage was worse:

So just hours later the cat had been back and this time not only had Jacks recently sowed seeds all gone, but half of Toms seedlings too.  Do you ever feel like giving up?   Fortunatly we had seeds left over to re-sow Toms side but not so for Jack.  So now on Jack’s side (the righthand side) we have parsley as before, and now lettace and raddishes.  The plan here is to pick the lettace and raddish leaves when they are very young in order to make a baby leaf salad when needed.   In oder to deter the cat I have now moved the grow bag nearer to the house in a position that is a lot less sunny (possibly a good thing in these really hot and sunny days) and they now get the sun in the late afternoon.   I have also added some sticks too, I am keeping my fingers crossed that this will be the last of the cat trouble.

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June 21, 2009

Sprouts Planted

STeve @ 4:37 pm

We haven’t grown sprouts for years but a good neighbour down the road gave us some the other day.   Sprout plants I never think of as the best looking plants in the world and so adding them to the flower bed was a bit of a challenge.   As these are pretty long term plants then I added them into a border that currently has some scatter seeds slowly coming up with the idea that long after the flowers from the seeds have gone that these sprouts will start to take over.

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June 19, 2009

Beans have a slow start

STeve @ 4:25 pm

You can hardly see them, but there are a number of runner bean plants slowly growing here.  I suppose that the ground is not really the best for beans here in that it is no great deep tretch dug months beforehand and filled with rotting compost like I did once do on the allotment.   But still, there is time for these little plants to grow and produce flowers.

Alongside I have added some sweetpeas to help things out a bit.

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June 15, 2009

Sunflowers planted outside

STeve @ 1:05 pm

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It has all been very much hit and miss with sunflowers this year.   To start with, non of the giant sunflower seeds ever came to anything.  These were old seed from last year which I suppose would had been the problem but I would had expected at least some to germinate (but instead of not  thing).  Fortunatly last year’s giant sunflowers self seeded a bit and so we now have two “wild” sunflowers growing in the garden.

It was touch and go with the many smaller sunflowers sowed indoors and then seemed to get a bit light depraved and so started life as small poorly spindly looking things.  Not helped weeks afterwards (after I had moved them to a more suitable place indoors) of being knocked over and loosing one of two straight away and then a couple more over the next days when they did not suvive the truma!

The planting out then has been quite an acheivement then to actual suvive this far.   All plants are now in the garden with support sticks, all looking very small and vulnurable and so if either the cat or the slugs do anything to these I will not be happy!

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