Yesterday J went to the allotment and brought back a trolley full of joy!

It's a 3 mile walk to the allotment and a 3 mile walk back and when I can't drive that's what he does - sometimes a friend will give him a lift back and yesterday he managed to get a bus back part way. He mowed and tidied and harvested and then brought all these wonderful things back to me using an old shopping trolley pressed into service many moons ago. 

Rudbeckia, sedum, yarrow, penstemon and sunflowers for the living room

Close up in the living room

Rudbeckia, tagetes and yarrow for the kitchen

Sedum, rudbeckia and tagetes in the kitchen

Last few courgettes

Box of beans

Apples galore

The courgettes were popped onto last night's homemade pizza and today we'll pod the beans and set them to dry in the dehydrator. The apples are destined for cakes and fruit leathers. The flowers are just bringing a smile to my face whenever I look at them.

And then there's this little video of picking the apples with the picking pole which made me smile as I could see the orchard corner and feel like I was there!

I may not be able to get to the plot at the moment but he's making sure I know it's still there and that means more than I can ever say xx

Six-on-Saturday 7th September 2019

Afternoon Blog-land today is my September link-up with The Propagator's Six on Saturday meme. I missed August but please check out The Propagator's post here for instructions on how to join in and take a look at his blog for links to lots of wonderful gardens from all around the world. My previous posts can be found by clicking on the #SixOnSaturday label.

Today was a trip to the allotment to see what we could harvest and to plant out the leeks, spinach beet and beetroot that has been languishing on the shelves here at home for far too long. We picked courgettes, Uchiki Kuri squash, dried beans, chickpeas, spinach beet, beetroot and apples plus a couple of lovely bunches of flowers. Then we had a look round to see what was to come.

1. Butternut squash doing well - 8 decent sized fruit on the now stopped plant. Cleared away the leaves to help them ripen.

2.  Some lovely sized eating apples on the small apple tree

3. The Borlottis are ripening well and in a few weeks they will join the bag of already dried beans that we harvested today .

 4. The first of the Achillea Cerise Queen has flowered at last adding their colour to the Rudbeckia rows in the cutting bed

 5. Their stems may be too short to cut but these sunflowers are still giving so much joy as bud after bud opens.

6. And in a sure sign of the changing seasons the sedum is putting on colour in the front border.

Bonus picture - we love our wildlife but it would have been really nice if the badger had left us just one sweetcorn cob to enjoy....grrr....

September is the season for shuffling

After the pot-shuffling at the weekend this week has continued to be about tidying the garden and preparing new plants for the coming season. Tuesday was a spot of pot weeding, cutting back gone over shrubby plants and herbs and generally tidying up the patio pots. It was also an impromptu slug and snail hunt as every pot I moved or emptied seemed to be offering up a hiding place for the hungry little beasties. Yesterday we pinned down a dozen or so strawberry runners to replace our ageing plants - strawberries will last several years but according to the experts their productivity drops off after two or three so we always try and generate our own plants from existing stock. J then emptied the coffee sack planter that was threatening to spill all over the patio and retrieved 1.6 kilos of lovely clean potatoes ready for cooking over the weekend and then weeded some more of the pots before ducking indoors to avoid a passing shower.

Pinned down and ready to root

You can never have too many strawberries

Tidy lettuce pot - should get one more meal from these

Today is a bit more house-related as Mum arrives to stay for a few weeks which we are really looking forward to but I did pop outside briefly to take some photos of the flowers in the sunshine and was rewarded with a newly minted Red Admiral and what I think could be a Tawny Mining bee, but my ID skills aren't brilliant even with the aid of the excellent Field Guide book by Steven Falk.

Red Admiral and friend on Rudbeckia Marmalade

Bee on perennial wallflower

Soggy sunflowers

After a wonderful day catching up with friends over lunch yesterday and dodging high winds and heavy showers, this morning we popped up to the allotment to see how the sheds, beans and sweetcorn had coped with the stormy weather. Luckily the tee-pees are still upright and the beans are climbing high, the sunflowers are continuing to give us dozens of beautiful heads of yellow, copper and rusty red and all but one sweetcorn plant standing proud - and this one looked more like a casualty of falling apples rather than high winds so it looks like the hazel windbreaks and hedgerows are working well to filter out the worst of the gusts. The sheds at each end are also still steady on their bases so we count ourselves lucky. A quick potter around the beds yielded well-washed crops and well-watered plants, so we picked more courgettes, peas, spinach beet and a few berries for the kitchen as well as a couple of bunches of sunflowers, rudbeckia and yarrow to brighten up the living room. We managed just a little bit of weeding before the rains quickly came hammering down, thoroughly watering us and everything on the plot. A short but productive visit.

Rudbeckia amongst the squash plants

Glorious multi-headed sunflowers

Peas, courgettes, onion and berries

Colours of August

Whilst there are still a few soft pinks and blues in the back garden the vibrant reds and yellows of late Summer are really starting to come to the fore now as the geraniums and lavenders start to hand over to the dahlias, the rudbeckias and the really pretty new Summerina which is a lovely cross between an echinacea and a rudbeckia.

The Summerina came to us as a dormant plant much earlier in the year from the lovely folk at Paddock Plants who grow their plants in Peat Free compost and ship with minimal plastic (just the re-usable wallet that the paperwork was in). They even included a note that if this particular plant didn't pick up then to get in touch and they would replace it as they were worried it was a little bit too dormant! As you can see it's thrived.

Summerina

Rudbeckia Marmalade

Tomato Nova

Dahlia Mignon series 

 And whilst the lavender and hollyhocks may be fading now they are still completely covered in bees and butterflies and bringing lots of joy to the garden.

Bumble bee feeding on lavender

Hollyhocks fading beautifully

Happy Gardening.

Morning World

Just in case you missed it, yesterday was the Solstice - the point where the day length is at it's longest and here in the Midlands it opened and closed with beautiful and very welcome sunshine. No getting up before dawn to head to the nearest stone circle for us this year though but rather a more gentle kind of day for me at least - a bit of pottering in the kitchen and garden but nothing too strenuous.

Solstice skies

J,  on the other hand, went to help with a work party at our allotment site. These are held a few times a year to lay road-stone, tidy up plots if someone is struggling, maintain boundaries, lay or repair water pipes or anything that requires many hands. Yesterday the committee had arranged to have a load of scalpings delivered - these are chopped up bits of old tarmac that have been scraped off a normal road somewhere during improvement works but are perfectly good to reinforce a track like ours which has a lower level of use than a normal road but needs a reasonable level of support to stop it ending up a muddy, rutted cart track. It's also a really eco-friendly way of reinforcing the site as it means that at least one lorry load of old road hasn't ended up in a landfill somewhere and we aren't wasting newly quarried stone chippings. About 20 folk from the site all pitched in to help spread the chippings once the lorry had delivered them and by lunchtime the track was winter-ready again. A brilliant way to reinforce the allotment community as well as getting a much-needed job completed. 

By the time I went to pick J up in mid-afternoon he'd also mown our paths, weeded some beds and started to prep the area that the sweetcorn will go in. I arrived in time to pick armfuls of cornflowers, take some photos and ferry a very muddy and tired man home.

Apples a plenty

Abundant cornflowers

Salmon flowered peas

Second sowing peas

Six on Saturday 15th June 2019

Another month has passed in the garden and so I'm linking up with The Propagator again  for today's Six on Saturday entry. You can find out more about the meme and how to join in on his blog here . You'll also be able to see links to all the other participants' posts too. I'm just taking part once a month but many folk take part every week - enjoy! To find my other posts just search on the label #SixOnSaturday.

I took advantage of a brief break in this week's rain to have a peek at all the edibles in the back garden. Many are destined for the allotment but it looks set to be too soggy this weekend to get them in the ground so some temporary re-potting may be required to hold them over. The herbs live here so I have quick and easy access to them from the kitchen.

1. Lots of beautiful Basil - this year's spring sowing of lettuce-leaved basil has germinated really well and this is just a small selection of the developing plants living in the kitchen - if it ever warms up some may end up outside. Already had a few leaves of these to add flavour to the salad leaves.

2. Outdoor Herbs - Cheating slighly here with pictures of both our Mint corner - Apple Mint, Tashkent Mint and Garden Mint all hangout by the drain and benefit from the damp shady space and of our Golden Oregano (and inherited Pinks) which benefit from a sunnier spot on the patio.

3. Purple-sprouting broccoli - nice happy sturdy little plants that will go in the ground soon - plenty of time for these as we won't be harvesting the sprouts until next Spring. In the background are some white sprouting plants too, all nestling on our garden shelves and tucked up in the corner between the house wall and the start of our not-so-long border!

4. Spuds - a trial of growing a few seed potatoes in an old coffee sack bought with our Transition Loughborough seed potatoes in January. You can source your own from The Crop Club. The rest of our crop is at the allotment and we watching the "Hutton Period" forecasts as we really don't want blight this early in the season and wet and mild is really not good. Find our more about "Hutton Periods" and late Blight from the Blightwatch website.

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5. Spinach beet - or silver beet or perpetual spinach - lots of names for this staple of our kitchen - these really really need to be in the ground and will keep us in leaves for the rest of the year. Less sensitive than true spinach but just as good in pies and pasties so we tend not to bother with that any more.

6. Apples - our lovely little family tree is covered in baby apples at the moment - mind you so are the path beneath, the pond next to it and the bed below as the June Drop is well under way here. Will wait another couple of weeks before we do any manual thinning as nature is doing a pretty good job on it's own.

Happy Saturday all, hope you enjoy the sixes...

Where's our rain?

Long view of the main plot area

As the much anticipated rain didn't appear yesterday we spent a couple of hours back up the plot this morning giving everything a thorough watering, we don't water often once everything's established but when it's newly planted we give the plot a thorough soaking to give the young plants a fighting chance.

Last of the Blue Lake beans in place

We also planted out the last of the climbing beans - Blue Lake and Kew Blue this time. and scattered some Cosmos seeds in amongst the sunflowers so with a bit of luck will have plenty of beautiful big cut flowers later in the summer.

Kew Blues in, cosmos sown, space still for brussels...

Talking of cut flowers, whilst J continued cutting back the weeds and long grass at the edge of some of the beds I delved into the Cornflower patch once more as it had exploded into bloom again even though I picked enough for two vases on Saturday - still this gave me a chance to give two lovely posies to a couple of neighbours that are always looking out for others and being incredibly kind.

 Homegrown, pesticide free and thoroughly beautiful

Last job of the day - picking more rhubarb, admiring the plot, and taking some snaps. A joyous end to a lovely long weekend of pottering - now we really do need some rain!

End of April garden watch.

Apparently it's National Gardening Week this week and this year is a celebration of growing your own produce so if you do and have photos the RHS want you to post pictures on social media using the #NationalGardeningWeek hashtag. We didn't know there was such a thing but let's face it, every week is gardening week in this house so I couldn't miss the opportunity to do a bit of an End-of-April round up of what's going on in our little patch.

J had a few extra days off this week so in addition to finally dropping a load of stuff off at our local charity shop (and acquiring a little table for the garden in the process), we've spent the last few days dead-heading and weeding, pricking out seedlings, potting on plantlets, shuffling spent bulb pots and watching to see if the dahlias would respond to being in the light. The achilleas, sweet peas, lettuce, rudbeckias and a few of the strawberries are all in new homes and the front grass paths have been mown. As the cowslips have taken over the back lawn that getting a couple of weeks reprieve and will be mown when they go over. The pots of scabious, strawberries, pansies, herbs and bulbs out the back have been weeded and the dead things have been emptied out ready for their pots to be re-used. The Babbington's Leeks that decided they'd rather be in the patio than in the pot have been cut ready for cooking with in the next couple of days. A couple of loads of washing have been dried on the line outside and J has spent some time in his shed working on a new bird table. And, in anticipation of a couple of wet days ahead a few of the prolific bluebells have been cut to fill a small jug in the living room. So how's your gardening week going?

After the weekend!

The achilleas germinated well

Now they have room to spread

First batch of sweet peas 

Dahlias emerging

Lettuces potted on

Peonies budding

Just the right height for a cuppa!