Gardener's World Live Report - Part 1

Last night, I couldn't sleep. I was like a child at Christmas. I just kept thinking 'I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow, I'm going to Gardener's World tomorrow etc.' I think we were both so excited.

We were up early this morning and left home at about 7:45 am to make sure we were amongst the first throught the barrier and in to the event. I'm going to do this report in three parts. This one now is about all the amazing and fun things that we bought (because that's what yo uare all really interested in) and then tomorrow morning will be a feature on the show gardens (including our own rankings) and then finally tomorrow afternoon/evening you will get all of the rest!

There are so many problems with this event. The first problem is that you spend a lot of money on gardening products, and then secondly they add the Good Food Show to the event too. Therefore you spend a lot more money in the Good Food Show. The third problem, which is a genuine problem is that you buy so much stuff and then you soon realise that one more piece of straw will break the camel's (your) back, therefore everybody buys a £12 trolley and you are constantly getting hacked with it. (We bought 3 tubtrugs to carry things in, they will have a use after today!)

Well here is what we bought. Quite an array of useful bits and bobs...

I mentioned in a previous post about how we are rapidly preparing for winter. We scoured all of the great seed offers available and bought loads of seeds, you can just about see them laid down on the table above. When it come to seed buying, I have a real addiction and don't know when to stop. I think 'that one looks good, and that one, that'll do too', then you have more seeds than you realise to add to your already massive seed collection. Oh well. I love it. I discovered a few great varieties too which look like they are ideal for smaller plots and gardens. The whole list of seeds is as follows....

Vegetable and Fruit Seeds
Courgette - Zucchini
Cauliflower - Igloo
Kale - Dwarf Green Curled
Turnip - Oasis
Aubergine - Orlando F1 Hybrid
Strawberry - Woodland
Climing Bean - Blauhilde
Sweetcorn - Hark F1 Hybrid
Brussel Sprouts - Brilliant F1 Hybrid
Swiss Chard - Bright Lights
Swede - Brora
Broad Bean - Aqua Dulch Claudice
Courgette - Foleil F1 Hybrid
Tomato - Gardener's Light
Lettuce - Little Gem
Brocolli - Purple Sprouting

Flower seeds
Mixed Wildflowers
Dwarf Topalino

The ones that are in bold have already been sown in to pots! How good are we! We got home about 4:45pm and we were in the garden until about 7:30. So much to do today, and even more to do tomorrow.

We also bought a great book about allotments called 'The allotment source book' by Caroline Foley, but in general it looks like a great book about growing your own (more reading...)  for only £5 too. It was marked up at £20 originally. We both love an impulse buy and bargain!

In the photo you can see the lovely planter we bought. It was very 'rustique' and we have filled it with potting compost and scattered various herb seeds. It will look great as a mini herb garden.

Amy also bought a fat ball maker for making our own fatballs for the birds.

Here are the 'growing' things we bought...

You can just about recognise a few of the things we bought.

The last few years at Gardener's World they have had a 'plant swap' stall, where you take a plant you don't want or need and swap it for one of the others that somebody else has brought in. This time, they changed it a bit. So you donated your plants to Children in Need and then if you wanted one of the other plants you simply donated what you thought it was worth to charity. From this tent we bought three sweetcorn plants that are very well established. Remember our sweetcorn failure when we planted the seeds earlier in the year. We also got a butternut squash plant that was at the top of our shopping list before hand anyway.

Well. The sweetcorn have been transported in to their final growing position too...

......in the large yellow tubtrug next to the rhubarb. We have had such great success with growing the courgettes in a tubtrug that we had no hesitation putting the sweetcorn in one too. Well we did have 3 brand new tubtrugs to use up too...

One of my favourite buys was this georgeous 'Filius Blue' pepper plant. The plant is full of small sized chilli peppers with the most indulgent purple colour, however they apparently turn red as they finally turn ripe.

Amy is very busy in the background labelling all the plants. We bought some funky yellow plant labels and we have now labelled everything.. and have abruptly ran out of labels for future use.

Look at the purple flowers too. This is a really ornamental type, it certainly brings some lovely colour to the veg patch especially with new tubtrugs and the yellow labels...

Simply georgeous!

I mentioned earlier that we bought the butternut squash plant, well Amy was intrigued when she saw a Turk's Turban squash in the show gardens... so we bought one of those too! The area that used to be where the eglu sat has been raised up with some well rotted home made compost and some multi purpose compost from left over bits from one place and another. The two squash plants are planted here, and are waiting to be joined by the pumpkin plants which I am going to leave for a little bit longer in the greenhouse...

We can't wait for our own squash to grow.



We bought plenty of delicious food at the Good Food Show but I'll put that all in part 3.

We've had the most amazing day, and I hope you've enjoyed reading about what be bought!

Part 2 will be up at 9am tomorrow (sharp!).

Thanks for reading.

Martin

Our application to join the composting elite!

We have a wormery!!

Well, it's not like it turned up today. We won it on ebay over a month ago and it was located near to our cousin who picked it up and brought it down last weekend for us. We went to collect the worms today!

The worms were bred only 7 miles away, can't get more local than that for a worm breeder!

Here is how the process went:

First of all we put the bedding block in 6 litres of water as stated on the packet...

I have used this stuff before and it is amazing how it turns into such a large quantity of material after it has absorbed the water...

We then put the 1st tray on top of the base. You have to put a cardboard disk in the tray and then put the bedding (pictured above) on top.

They say that if you just left the worms in the coco bedding it would be too sterile for them and they would look to seek pastures new and escape! Not what we want. I read on the internet that adding a handful of shredded paper and a small shovel full of dirt straight out of the flower bed will make the worms a lot more comfortable..

Amy got her hand dirty and mixed all the bedding up..

Well, it was time to add the worms! They came in small tubs so we emptied them a tub at a time...

Here is the first pot of the little wriggly wrigglers....

After all the worms were in we had to leave the lid off for an hour. Worms are light sensitive so will burrow in to the substrate if they are in contact with the light. After an hour, we went back to check and there was only one worm in site (Amy has declared this one as her favourite), so I presume everything is all good. We have now fed them their first kitchen scraps ( the ends of the courgettes and peppers and some teabags).

Here is the proud wormery owner...

Back in April I said in this post that Amy wanted worms and I wanted bees and we now have both! So that is a nice little achivement.

We will try to keep you updated with how the worms are doing. I follow quite a few blogs where people have wormeries and I do enjoy reading about them.

Can you believe it! Vegetable updates to follow later today or tomorrow.

Have a good day!

Martin

Sack of potatoes

Good Morning!! Just planted another bag of potatoes. Having such a restricted space for growing in, it is very convenient to grow potatoes in a bag. We have 6 bags and 1 pot of potatoes on the go at the moment. I have always criticised garden centres who sell a 'potato in a pot' that has almost reached harvest. The plant is flowering so the potatoes must be almost ready. I saw one garden centre sell this sort of thing at.. wait for it.... £7. Ok, granted you got a terracotta plant pot but then again they are the most expensive potatoes you have ever had, but realistically how many potatoes will you get in a small pot. 3 or 4? That works out at over £1.50 a potato.

I was intrigued to see a particular blog post the other day. They grew 7 perfect new potatoes in a plastic plant pot. I hope they doesn't mind but we've nicked their idea!! (I can't remember who's blog it was, so if you're reading, remind me and I will put the link in) Seeing as the whole sack of seed potatoes cost us 50p (for about 30 seed potatoes) and the pot is just one that was lying around it's a bit of a saving on £7. We are just open to seeing what works well when growing in a small space. Remember - Kaizen is Japanese for 'continuous improvement'.

I documented in a previous post about how that when growing potatoes in old compost bags like we do it is important to make sure that the bags are effectively covered so that no UV light can reach the potatoes and give any potatoes touching the surface a green tinge. However I've now manouvered a few things and the potato bags are now being sufficiently covered by other growing things. The courgette plants and tubtrug are covering two of the bags, the courgette leaves are really offering a lot of protection. Also the wigwammed mange tout, combined with the runner bean plants, the rhubarb, the fence and the eglu are offering more protection.
Here is the picture from wednesday's blog post..

It is quite hard to notice, but the potato bags are at the back of the courgette's foliage and are on the edge of the eglu run. (Please note, this eglu is empty.)

Things are looking really, really, really good for a continous supply because all of the bags are at different stages, so fingers crossed.

It has come to that point where all the summer crops are blooming and I know it's only May, but it's time to think about Winter..

..well maybe tomorrow!

Have a superb day!

Martin

'Kaizen' (vegetable style)

Kaizen is the Japanese term for 'continuous improvement'.

As a gardener you always wish to continually improve your methods, ideas and hopefully your final crop/harvest.

At the moment, the veg patch in the garden IS continually improving. The whole area is full of green and everything is growing well!

The pictures don't really represent what it looks like in real life. The courgette plants are going crazy, the tomatoe plants are growing daily, and the first lot of early potatoes are on their final cover up of soil and are peeking well out of the bag. There is also the gorgeous blue pot and the ravishing mange tout and runner bean bushes...



 

I mentioned the courgettes a minute ago. Want a peek?

There are ten courgettes on there. Some are minute, but 3 or 4 are over finger size, harvesting is a day or two away!!

Here is the second sowing of mange tout. The third sowing is just germinating now. The first lot have really thrived in a trough style pot, so the second lot are following suit..

Despite the progress in the bags and pots at the eglu end of the veg garden, the potting table is looking pretty uninspiring compared to a few weeks back. Just a seed tray of germinating mange tout, half dozen pitiful tomato seedlings, some cabbage seedlings and a few more runner bean bushes.

Away from the potting table though I have planted 15 runner beans, 6 sunflowers (for my grandparents) and 3 more pumpkins. I also sown some raddish seeds in the same pot as the salad leaves.

Unfortunately (where there is something good in the garden there is always something bad) some plants were affected by a quick frost a few days ago. The tempratures plumeted to -1 celcius and it is evident that some plants have suffered a little. Some of the edges of the leaves on the tomato plants have blackened and the cucumber plant has significantly yellowed. The runner bean bushes which were establishing well look very limp, but fortunately the younger plants that have just germinated seem to have come through well.

This is what I mean.. see the blackening tips of the leaves?

The chilli plant is really limp. I saw a picture on Mel and Paul's blog and there's was about to bloom but ours is far away from that. I've fed it and propped it up against a cane so fingers crossed!

We weren't going to be growing traditional runner beans this year, that's why we bought the runner bean 'bush' seeds. However, we now have resources to grow both. I made this structure the other day and the runner beans have been sown in pots whilst I improve the quality of the soil in the area. I've added multi-purpose compost on top of the actual soil and have 'dug it in'. I've also added some liquid feed so hopefully they'll get off to a good start!

The structure is against the boundary fence between the vegetable garden and the lawn.

Not only do we have this arched structure, but I have now got an obelisk which I took from my Grandad's garden, I'm in the process of starting to do his too! His first growbag was set up today so he can grown some tomatoes. My grandparents taught me everything I know about 'growing my own'.

Anyway, asides from good old vegetables, I finish my exams next Wednesday and I have a few projects lined up including my grandparent's and Amy's mums garden.

Amy is still keen on the idea of bantams, and we found ourselves bidding on an eglu on ebay earlier...

In the beehive, I removed the queen excluder so hopefully the bees will begin to draw out the comb so they can store some more honey!! I'll try and take pictures tomorrow.

Have a lovely evening.

Martin

Breakfast time composting..

What did you have with your porridge/toast/cereals/eggs this morning?

Think about it for one second.

Tea or Coffee?

Whilst making coffee today it reminded me of the likelihood of large volumes of valuable fertilizer and composting components that are being thrown away each day in the world.

Did you know that coffee grounds are actually a magnificent fertilizer.?You can use them to create a liquid feed which slowly releases nitrogen in to the soil or you can add them the composter to neutralise imbalances between acids and alkalines in the heap.

Teabags also do the same thing. But instead of making a liquid feed (I find coffee is most effective for this) I just throw them on the compost heap, don't worry about the actual bag the tea leaves are in, this will bio-degrade rapidly and will add fibre to the heap which is of course particularly good if you own a wormery. The tea leaves will add Nitrogen to the compost heap just like the coffee grounds do.

So instead of throwing away tea bags and coffee grounds, compost them instead! Not only will you save quantities of these items mounting up at landfill but you will also see the benefit to your own crops. Tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers etc will thrive from the extra fertilization.

If you do not have access to coffee grounds from your own coffee maker or from the by-product of the caffetierre, you can pop in to your nearest high street coffee retailer such as Starbucks or Costa and they will be only too happy to give you their used coffee grounds for free! Sometimes they are already displayed by the counter saying 'Free to composters'.

They should look a bit like this..

From my own experience I find that courgette plants tend to benefit from the coffee grounds being placed on top of the soil. If you place the cold wet grounds around the plant and then water the plant as usual you will allow the fertilizer to slowly filter down to the roots.

 This method also saves your watering can from getting dirty, because the other way to do it is to put 500g of coffee grounds directly in to a standard watering can and then fill the rest up with water and then apply to the plants as usual, but you may find that coffee grounds get stuck to the sides and dry on to the side which just looks plain untidy and may block the spout too!

So next time you go to throw them teabags away..

Happy Coffee Composting!

Martin

An introduction to urban sustainability.

Wow! A couple of years ago I used to blog religiously about my self sufficicent dream and the small steps I was taking to get there. But things change! I no longer have chickens at home, I no longer have my beehive, I no longer have my allotment and I no longer have quail. But I did meet the girl of my dreams, so I understandably got a little side tracked. I also came out the other end of the education system with an A* in Business, A in Economics and B in English Language, and hey presto I am now studying at Aston University for a DEGREE! Blimey, time realy does fly.

I was going to rejuvinate my old blog, but when I went to find it I discovered that vox had in fact closed down and my memories which I captured in my blog had been lost forever. So I am back here on blogspot where it all started about 6 years ago...I think they call it google blogger or something like that in this day and age.

I would just like to introduce my other half for those who previously followed me. This is..Amy.

Amy is still studying for her A-Levels and is currently pondering which route to take regards to university or not to university. We met at a Fireworks display just over 3 years ago and we have been togther for 2 and a half years!! Amy was not really into chickens and vegetables other than the concoction of the two on a plate come Sunday evening. I was dedicating more time to Amy and Education that the self sufficiency stuff went out the window, and I needed to save the money to things like drive and insure a car, a rather costly excercise in today's world!

Amy has never blogged before and she has never ever grown anything other than her nails before now. But I'm buckling her seatbelt for the rollercoaster ride that comes with being a green bean.

 From today everything changes. We will both have access to the blog and you will see both of us posting from time to time either individually or as a pair. This blog will track the progress of our small scale urban adventure in to being green and enjoying a not quite self sufficient, but more sustainable lifestyle.

Please come back to see us soon!!

Martin