From Sunflowers to Potatoes…
We bought some top soil, the first time ever I had bought it! Normaly I have managed to find someone on freecycle wanting to get rid of some, but not this. So, bought a little amount and covered some of the worst areas in the front where the seed just hasn’t managed to get going yet. If we keep doing this every year, should have quite nice grass after six or seven years!
It has been growing for some months now and it was the first time ever to cut it using a lawn mower. The bloke next door suggested, as I was putting the seed down, that when I mow the lawn all I will do it rip out the grass and dig up the left over bits of shingle underneath. Hopefully then he is now looking at what has been quite successfull. The grass is in two main bits here. The top bit which is very very patchy in places was sown in the autumn and it shows that maybe the soil I put down was not thick enough. The green bit near the bottom I did in the spring with a good thick layer of top soil from someone’s garden, and it has done very well.
I did spend ages pondering about cutting or not as it is meant to have wild flower seed mixed in. I could see one or two flowers, but the grass was looking a mess and the thought of trying to cut down very long grass sometime later did not please me. Plus, it is always good to cut the new grass in order to get it going a bit more. The patchy parts I will re-seed in the autumn.
After a numbe of sunny days the grass was not looking good without water, but for the last couple of weeks it has been warm and raining which has been ideal. The grass seed in the front is going very well indeed, with a small splattering of wild flower seed doing something too it seems.
So much going on and so little time to do things! I have added a whole load of extra things this week, so comments are with the photos. It has been sun sun sun, hot hot hot all week, which has meant lots of watering although only on the small things. Everything else has to take their chance, including the new grass seed in the front garden which is a bit of a pity. I have watered it a couple of times, but it will come up eventually and if it doesn’t then a top up on Autumn will do the job I am sure.
Beans - only planted them a couple of days ago so no show as yet:
Rhubarb - needs picking, we have made some pies from it already:
Tayberry - this is a new one this week. One of the fruit bushes that we got reduced from Woolworths and it seems to have taken and has new growth on it:
Wild Strawberries - some nice little flowers and some small green strawberries starting to show. That and the two plants are now multiplying like it is going out of business:
Blackcurrents - this is the third or fourth year (I forget) and this year the bush never got pruned and so it is really looked after itself. Mind you, a good growth of flowers appearing:
Sunflowers - the ones that started it all. These are no four weeks old and no more slug problems after using pellets. They are well on their way outside while a couple more are just starting to show inside (to replace the slug eaten ones) as well as two planted directly outside showing now too:
Potatoes - I managed to get a couple more off freecycle, so now we have four seed potatoes in the pot. The existing ones the growth was about an inch above the soil, so I have now topped it up with more soil. The next time I have to do this, it will be at the top:
Grass - don’t be fooled by the photo, it is actually quite patchy and the hot sunny weather has not helped at all. Mind you, it does look like it is meant to be there and from a distance is a nice carpet of green. It is meant to rain tomorrow:
Tomatoes: now repotted and outside:
Chillies - now repotted outside. The stones are to keep them upright:
Clematis is growing very well, about an inch or more per day. It will soon be up to the wire and off along the fence:
Amaranthus - I really need to read up on what to do with these:
Basil - growing nicely and time to repot them I think:
Cress - more luck this second time and half of it eaten, yum:
Mini Sunflowers - ready to plant outside:
Sweetpeas - every single seed seems to have done something which is fantastic:
Salad - still growing but very slowly, and little bits of it dieing too, not doing too well. I think we will put some seed outside at sometime:
We are certainly in business now. Sunflowers have been outside for a week and while we have lost three of them, the remaining ones are still going. We have planted a couple of new ones straight into the ground and are awaiting them to appear, we still need to plant one indoors and then we would have had replaced all the ones the slugs had. We are using slug pellets now.
Potatoes showed above the soil this week and have now been buried under a load of new compost on top. We will keep an eye on them and keep topping them up until the soil is at the top of the pot. A long way yet to go.
Grass in the front is doing really well, we have had some warm days with sun and rain. These last days it is been solid sunshine and so tonight has been my first evening of watering it, with a watering can(!) - it takes about four goes but gets the main bits drenched in a bit of water.
Sunflowers:
Potatoes:
Grass:
Salad is growing slowly. I think a bit of over watering at one time as killed one or two plants, but we are starting to have some nice looking baby salad leaves:
Sweet Peas are coming up!!! This is fantastic. The seeds are from sweet peas that we got off family from Cornwall last year and we saved some of the seeds:
Sunflowers:
Basil is doing fine. I think I need to repot them now, so I have that on my list to do:
Chillies. Our of four, two have really got going whereas a third one has yet to develop any leaves, I don’t know if it will now. The fourth…. it is still somewhere not yet appeared:
Cress is much more of a success second time around. Less watering and it is looking good - ready to eat infact:
Amaranthus is in need or repotting now I think!
Tomatoes certainly in need of repotting!!
The weather at the moment is fantastic for growing grass, lots of warm sun, and lots of warm rain. In just one week we now have grass starting to show in the front garden.
After a chance post on freecycle for some top soil I managed to make contact with a friendly couple who lived just down the road. A couple of hours of digging and bagging up soil (plus a good tea break in the middle) and we had a large mound of earth on the driveway. I thought it would take ages to spread it over and was also not too sure if it would cover all that I would need.
On Saturday morning we had some spare time and so I thought I would get T&J to help with some of the spreading and of course keeping a keen eye out for wiggly worms for them too. It then didn’t take anytime at all to spread it out, flattern it down, rack it a bit, and then sow wild flower and grass seed. There was more than enough for a good layer of earth and we managed to rake off a couple more bag full of shingle. A lot of the rest we used to fill in a big dip that normally fills with water and floods during the winter. The soil is no way flat, but it is good for our needs of a wild meadowy look and feel.
Now we wait…. It rained last night which was fantastic.
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