How to win when you have the irritation of small stones in your borders
As you know, most parts of our garden are very stony. Not just bricks but smaller stones too. A few days ago I finally twigged that if I collected the smaller stones as I spread my concentrated manure and bone meal mix, I could actually add them to the gravel in the driveway. This needs topping up in parts. It has been seven years since we spread a bit too much gravel on the driveway. It was a nightmare to prepare the ground. Luckily D and Tony did this. I was there to spread the gravel. Even though I was doing a very physical job at the...
read moreThe first Cottage Smallholder annual get together
Danny and some of his friends on the forum have plotted and planned our first Cottage Smallholder get together. It will be a chance to meet people that you’ve met in cyberspace and the excuse for a jolly good party. The date is Saturday July 23rd 2011 and I’d like to extend the invitation to all readers of the blog. It seems a long way away now but if you’d like to come and meet other bloggers and us and our cottage menagerie make a note in your diary and email me through the Contact Us tab above. Secretly, I suspect that D thinks it’s...
read moreGrow Comfrey to give your garden a real lift year after year
A few years I wrote about rocambole and a few weeks later I discovered that it was actually growing in my garden. A colleague in London had given it to me on a plant swap and described it as “White bells that smell of garlic. Weird!” I felt such a fool. I’ve had a longing to grow comfrey in my garden as it appears to be such a useful plant. The leaves can be made into a fertilising tea – high in potash, nitrogen and loads of other trace elements that the exuberant roots find deep down in the soil. This tea is a wonderful free...
read moreInvesting in perennial vegetables for the hungry gap: Sea Kale/ Seakale/ Crambe maritime
Many years ago, when I was just a newbie herbaceous gardener a friend came to stay with her mother. Her mother bought me the book The Victorian Kitchen Gardenby Jennifer Davies. As I wasn’t actually planning to grow vegetables at the time it was put on my books for later shelf. I had no idea that suddenly it would come into its own this year. Here I found details of making hot beds and so much more. OK Victorian kitchen gardens were labour intensive but I do have time on my hands and if you cut out things like expensive hothouse boilers,...
read moreForum software update glitch
Today I (Danny) updated this blog’s WordPress software to the current version. That worked fine – we know because you are reading this! Unfortunately, the forum required a corresponding upgrade that has failed. Hopefully we will get it all working again within 24 hours. Sunday 09:15 it appears to be OK now.
read moreHappiness is sunshine and a great book
I spent most of the day in the garden. Have that strange first sun on my face feel – slightly tight tingly skin. Ate brunch out there, without my trusty new hat, to get an extra blast of vitamin D. The hat has become my favourite companion when humans are not around! Comfortable and as reassuring as a hat could be. I bumped into an old friend in Newmarket and she said how much better I’m looking. “You’ve actually got some colour in your face.” So the beneficial effects of the sun must be working. I’m loving the sunshine – it’s...
read moreSpring maintenance in the herbaceous borders is a doddle with a Cape Cod Weeder
When I first moved to the cottage my mum told me that I needed to scratch over the surface of all the herbaceous borders with a hand fork in the spring. “It lifts the soil, lets it breath and avoids compaction. Ideally you add some fertiliser to give it a bit of a boost.” The next year I scraped and boosted. I probably followed this advice for at least three years and everything flourished. The borders were smaller then. But as they increased in size I ignored this pertinent tip. Using a hand fork is hard work on the wrist. It’s easy to...
read moreHow to easily create more growing space in your polytunnel or greenhouse
Somehow people seem to be much more creative and imaginative in polytunnels than greenhouses. I picked up the idea of floating shelves from the excellent book by Mark Gatter and Andy Mckee How to Grow Food in Your Polytunnel. Of course the subtitle ‘All the Year Round’ was the initial hook for me. We are so lucky to have our Solar tunnel. It’s stronger than a polytunnel and withstood the February high winds. And the time when I tripped over the wheelbarrow handles and bounced off its sturdy cover in a ghastly stomach wrenching ‘Am I...
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FD