Home Ed Garden

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Sunflowers (left) and new carrots. The sunflowers are being eaten by slugs, no idea how to keep them off without using slug pellets which is obviously a no-go. Any ideas? Carrots sewn outside less than 2 weeks ago.

The courgettes mostly died. We have one left but that is rapidly being eaten by slugs too. The red onions that J sewed seem to be going ok though.

M’s spring onions are coming on well too, as are J’s carrots (although the carrots are a little bunched up, but not bad for his first attempt I think).

Lastly are our bought in plants, the tomato seedlings came to nothing so we needed to buy in plants (Alicante) or buy in tomatoes all summer… I didn’t sew runner beans so we bought a handful of plants (Scarlet) a few days ago. They really need to go into bigger pots now though…

in the form of seedlings.

The seeds we planted a week ago have all germinated so now we have tomato, carrot, courgette and red-sunflower seedlings all doing very nicely.

Carrot

Courgette

Tomato

Red Sunflowers

The paper pots are holding their own although they don’t look too great.   

Since moving into my lovely new house I have been keeping my eye on the garden wondering what would come up in the spring.

 Now the spring is upon us and everything is blooming marvellous but there are a number of things that I have no idea what they ar - this is where you come in!

If you can identify any of these plants/trees/shrubs please shout in the comments box below (even if you are not 100% sure as I can always check pics when I have a name to go on.

#1

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They are not in brilliant condition having been sadly neglected in the past, but I’m hoping that once I know what they are I can bring them along a bit (and probably kick myself for not knowing into the bargain!)

It’s been a cold few days here so not much going on in the garden at the moment.  The rabbit has enjoyed a little time out in his run which has kept the grass down a little but not much else occurring outside.

 I created some newspaper seedling pots, which should rot down into nothing once planted out, the other night.  I looked up various sites on how to do it but was getting nowhere, so just got a spice pot form the cupboard, rolled the newspaper around it, squished in the bottom and then folded the top over inside itself to keep it all in place.  No idea if it will work or not in the long term but for now they are functional and are not costing the earth.

Jack filled the pots with various seeds (Carrots, courgettes, tomatoes, sunflowers) and watered them (with a squirty-juice bottle as we don’t have a teeny tiny watering can!) and now they are placed on the shelf by the window unitl I can think of somewhere else for them to go…

We did have a few flurries of snow, but the previously sewn seeds have not germinated yet so should be okay. I think the boys are planning on sewing some more to go under glass just in case… 

We bought some more seeds today.

M chose Little Gem lettuce (Mr Fothergills seeds) and Carrots (Mr Fothergill’s Flyaway F1 ) .  We haven’t sewn either one though because arctic weather conditions are forecast for this weekend.  Which brings me to the dilemma of whether to bring in the already sewn tubs and have them in the kitchen (or bath???) for a few days.  I wouldn’t have thought the seeds had been sewn long enough to have begun to germinate yet but on the other hand better safe than sorry…

I placed the compost in the remaining two tubs to save my carpet from more mess to save the boys a job so they are all ready for when the weather does become mild again.  We need more tubs and more compost soon.

Nothing more to report at the moment.

This afternoon we visited the local garden centre and purchased our first set of tubs, 70 litres of compost and the children’s first two packs of seeds - red onions (Unwin Seeds - Red Baron) and spring onions (Unwin Seeds - White Lisbon).  Both packs say to sew out in March, hope we don’t get too much frost now. 

 I punched the holes out of the bottoms of the tubs whilst the lads were watching War of the Worlds, then they filled the tubs with compost.  It’s pouring down outside so they did it all in the lounge (on newspaper), the floor was covered so probably not the best idea I’ve ever had!

Seeds were sewn in neat little rows, although I have a sneaky feeling we may have quite a few clumps of spring onions rather than a nice neat row, but not to worry, I’m sure they will taste just as nice if they’re untidy.  The Spring onions say to sew ‘few and often’ so you have a steady harvest, so we must remember to put some more in in a couple of weeks.

 The first tubs are done –>

In the beginning we decided to turn over the garden to vegetables, but as time went the children decided that they would like to grow vegetables in tubs and keep the ‘lawn’ and flower beds as they are for now.

 This blog is a tribute to the hard work I am sure the children are going to put into their gardening, so that one day they can look back and wonder at what they did. It will also serve to remind them what they did well and what didn’t work so in future years they can learn from what has gone before.