4 August 2008

My Holiday

Hello All

I thought you may like to see some of what I have been doing whilst not on the Lottie.

I have been to the Lake District recently and where were staying had a community garden.



As you can see they have a wonderful setting in which to garden. It is on a fairly steep slope and has a lot of acid soil areas but they have done a fantastic job of changing a field into a lovely garden or Lottie. They had a bee hive and several chickens. About 400 metres away they have a beautiful waterfall and grounds in which you can sit and reflect on the quietness and peace of the place.

It was worth the walk up the steep slope to see the lovely garden and sit and rest .




Late in April I was helping mom do some wedding flowers for a friend and they turned out extremely well. The bride was extremely happy. Tell me what you think?



The last 2 photos are just there so you can see nature at its utter best

1 Simple buttercup and a beautiful sunset over the North Cornish coast.

Hope you like them


That's what I have been doing whilst not on the Lottie; what have you been doing in your free time?

Yours Miriam

18 May 2008

The latest News From Me

Well hello all,

A long time since my last post, well things have been busy. With a wedding and the bad weather and me doing lots of overtime at work things have just been left to their own devices again. But as I have said in earlier posts This Year will be different.

Well so far it has been, the Hubby has been done at least 5 times this year instead of the twice last year. Every time I go over I am weeding and planting and not just groaning with despair at the weed growth. Little and often is probably the motto for this year.
These are some of the Potatoes we out in in Feb and March. I thought I had lost them because we had put them early and we had some fairly hard frosts. But we have only seemed to have lost 1 or 2 plants over all. Behind these spuds we have put another 4 rows and so we should have some for them winter we hope. Lets hope the blight don't come again.

I have put in some runner beans again but I still have more to put in yet. As you can see I have swapped the spuds and peas and beans around for this year and I hope they will all do well. my heritage peas are starting to put on a spurt. If all goes according to plan they should grow to about 10 foot tall. Thus dwarfing the runner beans


The Rhubarb is coming on well and we have had a lot off it already, but we shall see what happens to this year as we will have to dig and split it as there are too many for such a small bed.
A new venture f0rm me I am trying some strawberries and I shall keep you post on how they do. Does anyone have any ideas as how to best look after them

The broad beans are actually doing very well at the mo, they are taller than in this photo which was taken about 3 weeks ago. again I have only lost about 5-8 plants of the 50 I planted. So not doing badly with them either.




Here you can see 1 of my bush marrows and some small lettuces. I have had to net them, as the birds wont leave anything for the slugs to eat if I didn't.

Anyway I just thought you may want to see what we both look like after a hard day at the Lottie

I am on the left and Simon is leaning on the spade

Hope to hear from some of you soon

Mim

27 March 2008

Nearly Cleared plot.....

Hello All

It is that time of year again; what with finishing the digging and starting to plant out this years seeds and plants, when do we have time to stop and do anything else.

Well I managed to get to the Lottie today for a couple of hours, first time since the end of Feb, due to work and weather conditions. Having cleared some of the rubbish and tidied up the Lottie I find we only have the following bit of ground to sort out.
We cannot do much with this as most of it is either compost bins or Rhubarb as you can see from the next photo.


But Rhubarb is not the only thing growing on the Lottie to date. We have planted up 3-4 ranks of spuds with another 4-5 ranks to go in still. There are 5 rows of broad beans in and I still have some kale and broccoli left in the ground but that is nearly finished.
As you can see the plot is looking quite tidy at the mo and lets hope this year we can keep on top of it better than last year.

The piece of ground we could not use last year because of the mass of horseradish can now be used this year. We think we have got 99% of it out and if we do get anymore then I will us Azooral on it and that should sort out any little ones.

We have started planting the broad beans in it so far but we will also try planting carrots and Kohl Rabi and beetroot in there this year and see what happens.


Hope to hear from some of you soon
Yours Doidge
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12 March 2008

Not much doing

Hello again

I thought I would put the world to rights again today. The weather has been really bad again this week and I have been at work while the sun has been out so no work at the Lottie again. When I get home at 6.30 I cannot get anything done at the Lottie so I have to wait until the weekend and then try getting a whole weeks work done in a couple of hours.

We have been down twice in the last 3 weeks and planted some more stuff in the ground. But I have been sowing some things at home. I am trying to save some money this year and am trying to grow some flowers from seed this year instead of buying them.

I have tried this before and not had much success. I do better from cuttings, so my neighbours had better watch out.

So far all I have got is really long spindly growth so I think I will have to do some more and see what happens.

This week I am going to start some new broad beans and try sowing my peas in pots and then get them ready for the ground.

I like being able to see things grow from seed and then eat off it later.

So what about the plot. we have dug over 2/3 of now and we have decided to get rid of the grass paths as they are taking up a far amount of planting room. The grass has been saved to make into loam for next year.

So instead we are going to dig out the winter stuff soon and then make one very large bed and divide it up using the same fencing we brought last year. That way we get back about 6x3 foot of ground we can use. I am aiming to get it better laid out for the competition this year and get a better variety of plants in and hope they all come up in time.

I will definitely be growing Nasturtiums again as they did really well as did the Sweet Peas. But I don't have the room for too many flowers this year so I have planted bulbs which I lift and put back into my own garden for next year.

Anyway I will go now and try to take some photos the next time I am at the Lottie.

Happy sowing
Mim

26 January 2008

New start 2008

Today is the first time since November I have been the Lottie for about 6 weeks .

I lost my keys over Christmas, and only found them when I got back to work. The weather has been awful like most of the country and that has prevented my return until today.

When I arrived I expected to have to deal with a lot of wind damage but found that the only thing that had blown away was my compost bin lid. Which someone else had found and so I got it back.

When at the Lottie in November I planted some broad beans and when I looked at them today I found that they have already started coming up and 1 was already in flower.

The 1 in flower was the one I found growing where the spuds had grown last year and we thought we would try and keep it. Looks like we may have done the right thing.

Today we planted another 2 rows of broad beans and we hope they will do as well. Come the end of Feb we will plant Bunyard's Exhibition ones as they don't like frost .



Again, we also planted some more pansies and some heather I had had in the garden and we will see how it comes on over the next few months. The small daffodils we planted last year also have some green leaves and mom thinks it also has some flowers ready to come on them very soon.

Down one side of the 4 beds in the middle of the Lottie we have planted some bulbs of various sorts. I found a lot of bulbs left over after plating up my own garden for the spring and so I have mixed them up and planted unknown bulbs.
I look forward to see what comes up.



At the Lottie today we meet our neighbour and he had a lovely spade which made light work of turning over the soil. It appears to be spring loaded at the back. If anyone has any idea of what this tool is or where I can get one from I really would like to know.I had a go and so did mom and we both liked it as it would be good for people with bad backs and knees, like me.

The work over we took some purple kale of Broccoli back for tea and I gave it to mom as she had done a lot of useful work today.


Anyway, it its time I went and did my tea and sorted out what I am planting for the next season.
Happy Lottie time
Doidge