Yesterday was the first day of some real harvesting for dinner, we had beetroot to start, baby carrots and peas for main, rhubarb with a few strawberries and rasberries for pudding and prepared salad for todays lunch - so tasty! May have a problem with the tomatoes, we have leaf mould and they're not looking too happy especially as I think they had a bit of the vine weevil problem too, I gave them some tlc yesterday and am hoping to see a bit of improvement otherwise the plans for lots of tomato sauce will not be going ahead!
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Thought it was about time I updated you on what I'm up to, on the knitting front it's a felted bag from Nicky Epsteins Fabulous Felted Bags - the Fuschia one. Here's how it is so far (lots more leaves to knit!)
On the gardening side we have a major problem - Vine Weevils!! evil little b*****ds they're everywhere so I have spent £30! on nematodes so fingers crossed they sort it out and it all recovers. The Cauliflowers and Broccoli are suffering the most, but here's a pic of the one cauliflower doing okay - it's lovely how the leaves wrap it up inside to protect it when it's little!
Some fab news, Max and Warren (not to mention Emily and Harrison) are coming to stay! Warren says he'd like the nice Chinese we had last time they came - I think he's still a salad dodger (like he was at uni when we flatshared) and is alarmed by the mention of us having an awful lot of lettuce to eat!!
The courgette fell off!! I spotted the culprit though - a little tiny slug, so I covered him in organic slug pellets! That'll teach him to sneak into the greenhouse! But no need to worry there's more growing well!
Going to Venice very soon! Very excited and charging the camera battery ready!
I just tried walking Paul around the garden showing him all the progress but he really doesn't share my enthusiasm, so I'll share it with all of you instead!
Every year this clematis performs fantastically, it never gets much bigger but couldn't possibly fit another flower on it!
And look how well the salad boxes are doing, complete with nasturtiums for a colourful salad, we've had quite a lot of salads in the last few days (I even had a lettuce only sandwich to try and get through some of it)
Here's some of my many, many pots I'm rather pleased with nicely collected around the old singer sewing machine base!
Lastly here's Bob enjoying the new border that is fast filling up but at the moment has lots of room to bounce about in and hide behind plants to jump out on Tiggy the cat!
Elsewhere I have the start of the tomatoes and peppers, an inch long courgette, flowers on the peas so they'll not be long and the rhubarb is still producing well! Unfortunately my day in the garden yesterday was cut short as the summer shower turned into a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning! Tiggy and I made a run for shelter only to have to run back out again to retrieve all the tools when we realised it wasn't going to stop (at least I went back out, Tiggy said 'sod that, I'm off to bed mum')
If only it would stop raining I'd get outside and take some pics of all the action in the garden - lots of flowers opening. The blue clematis is performing as well as ever, it's absolutely covered in huge blus flowers - really quite spectacular! and the first sign of a plum tomato is showing! I'll post again soon with pics but been a bit busy and I've had the in-laws stopping!!
Lots of progress to fill you in on! on the knitting front the Phildar cardigan is doing well I've done the back and both fronts and am on the trumpet sleeves - however I have rather long arms and get a bit bored doing the long straight bit of sleeves! hence why I often knit sleeveless tops! here's the first sleeve in progress:
And on the gardening side it's all been coming on very well with the sun and all this rain too! here's the greenhouse which has an awful lot of tomatoes in it and also the pots ad baskets settling in before it's warm enough to put them out, and they seem to be loving it in there! they get bigger every day.
and here's the first of the lettuces in their box - we'll be eating them soon the rate they're growing!
The blackbird family are having a bad day - they decided to teach the fledglings to fly today, they never learn that every year we all have a stressful day as they fly around screeching in panic and I run round trying to catch Tiggy the killer cat who leaps madly on all the poor dazed little baby blackbirds until I catch her and shut her in and put up with the banging on the cat flap all day! It started at 6am this morning when she spotted we had forgotten to lock the cat flap last night so she went and brought the first one in which thanks to the loud screeching we woke up and released, the next one wasn't so lucky as I didn't spot her in time as she ran up to the bedroom with it! Then the 3rd one was this afternoon while I was in the garden - cue mad dash by all parties concerned - Tiggy is now banging on the flap periodically coming in to me to shout loudly while Mr & Mrs Blackbird are flying back and forth trying to show the daft fledgling on the floor how easy it is (it's been an hour now and he's not moved!)
here's the cute flower brooch I've knitted for my Nan's birthday (from my lovely new knitted flowers book) I'm okay showing you now as Nan's not got a computer so won't see it (Maureen if you're looking sssshh!). I'm supposed to be getting on with the Phildar cardigan but I've been getting distracted trying different flowers with different wool.
On a gardening note this lovely sunshine and showers is wonderful for the little plants! they're all getting excited and doing well, here's the nasturtiums in hanging pots over the salad boxes ('cos you can eat them too!)
Rather embarrased yesterday I stepped into the greenhouse with the words "hello everybody how are you doing?" meaning the tomatoes, bedding etc (they honestly do grow better when you chat to them, but it's not something I do in company!) unfortunately didn't realise the neighbours were just behind the fence and I think either thought I was talking to them or decided to humour me as being quite mad!!
I must plant up my baskets and summer pots soon, I intended to grow my own bedding from seed but after a slow start I bought a few plugs and now have got carried away everytime I see bedding plants I buy more and my own are now getting going! should have a good show this year - although I still feel I need more height for my pots so I'm bound to wind up at the nursery this weekend buying more and then needing more pots for all the bedding to fit - because of course it's cheaper to buy trays of it!
Well after a lovely Sunday afternoon in the garden that's everything planted, On Sunday I put the sweetcorn out in their square bed (thought it might be a bit early but they were trying to climb out of their pots so out they went, cabbages (normal and red) and cauliflower are in the plot, I pricked the salad leaves lettuce out into one of the new boxes and the Basils into another one. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are coming on very well and the runner beans will go out to their canes very soon. So now it's sit back (apart from a regular hoe and water!) and wait for the harvesting!
We did have the first harvest of Rhubarb on Sunday, unfortunatly Paul left it in the oven while chatting to Nicci next door and when he came back half of it had glued itself the the oven floor!! So we had small individual Rhubard crumbles in ramekins - very yummy they were!
On a knitting note my very lovely new book arrived - Nicky Epstein's Knitted Flowers, which I fell for when ordering the also lovely Fabulous Felted Bags (as seen at knitting group where Laurence is knitting from it) by the same author - Amazon did it's 'if you like this..you might like...' and I fell for it but they are very lovely books.
It's been the most glorious day for gardening! The greenhouse is now on final phase with 2 growbags of cherry tomatoes and 10! pots of plum tomatoes - last year we did 6 plum and we've now run out of tomato pasta sauce so need more this year, though there is a concern that in a couple of months we may not actually be able to get inside the greenhouse for tomato plants! especially as I've set up the extremely 'green' watering system from the water butt with 'worm juice' included'!
I think now everything is planted with some getting ready to plant out when we can be certain of the weather - lovely though it is, it is only April and I remember the year the potatoes were really quite big when they were hit by frost! Ooooh the heartache that year after weeks of lovingly chitting and then digging channels and nurtering to see leaves turn brown! The sweet peas went out today as they were trying to climb out of their pots - but they seem to be a bit tougher! the Rhubarb is going like crazy and I now realise is in a really awkward place to get round the back of the greenhouse, but I don't like to upset it by moving it when it's growing so well so I'll just keep carefully climbing over it!
The new border we dug out a couple of weeks ago (more lawn reclaimed from the lawn mad husband!) is looking very empty despite spending an alarming amount at several garden centres recently! although Bob the bunny seems to like bouncing around in it?!
Here are some tulips that have survived - when we moved in there was a mass of spring bulbs but nothing else at all and we had to move a lot to put the patio and path in, but these lovely bulbs have congregated behind the strawberry pot where Paul really can't say they're in the way, and they've been glorious today!
On a final note, here's the penguin jumper I knitted as modelled by little Ted! apparently they've been inundated with them so we've been instructed to hang on to them until they are needed again, it's very funny at knitting group to see the variety - especially the dayglo pink ones!
Apologies for rather sporadic posting lately, mainly due to an awful lot of gardening (much of it in the rain!) and spending most evenings in the bath recovering. This is what we've achieved this week:
We put in a water butt to the greenhouse which with the aid of a clever watering system will water the greenhouse much more thoroughly than in past years and I'm intending when it's full to put 'worm juice' (from the wormery, mainly consisting I think of worm wee and sweat but very very good feed!) into the butt so everything is getting lots of feed!
We recycled some more wooden boxes to create a raised bed for salad crops where there had previously been the 'dumping ground' so we made several trips to the tip with tub trugs full of rocks dug out of the garden. I'm rather pleased and it will hold a lot more than the greenhouse which gets over run with tomatoes and be easier to harvest at dinner time! However as at the moment it is just boxes of compost Tiggy thought we'd just opened the latest in public conveniences for cats!! so that will have to be discouraged!
We finally got the potatoes planted which turned into an epic when in my last trench I came across something solid where the potato needed to go - after about an hour of Paul and I digging and levering we finally got out not just a rock but a boulder about a foot square! I then had to reconstruct my carefully dug trench and carry on planting!
And finally here's Tiggy who seemed convinced that there was something for her in the gift bag!
So after the last few days hard graft I was very glad to get to a nice relaxing knitting group this evening!
