growing things

Grumpy

Today has been one of those days that is just on its head. Double burnout. I’m sort of on the way out of burnout, but Steve woke up broken. And I ended up running away instead of dealing with it, abandoning him to the kids, and absconded into my den in the attic. Before running…

Greening

I made it outside again today. I had dental surgery a week and a half ago, with an infection/abscess developing afterwards, so it’s only been a couple of days since I have been relatively pain free again. Last week I made it out before the abscess got too bad, and helped bring a pallet of…

July 6th 2019

It rained overnight so it’s been a non-nettle weeding day today. Plenty of cleavers to pull out, plenty of herb robert, and plenty of other weeds and stray grasses. In amongst all the chaos in this little patch is my walking onions, some purple sprouts, purple poppies which I did not plant but I love…

Last week I got home from school one night to find Steve had finally had chance to make some shelves for the big living room window for me, so I’ve somewhere to set out all my seed trays! The next day I got all the seeds sown – sweetcorn, giant pumpkin, crown prince squash, butternut…

Food forest beginnings

Round the back of the house, there’s a pretty big area that I can see from my kitchen window. For a year now I’ve been dreaming of turning it into my main kitchen garden but there have been other, more pressing, areas to attend to. But. Steve has finally been able to take some days…

Sat 20th Oct 2018

Today has been Good. Work-wise I’ve harvested and cut back three of four pumpkin plants (the fourth, in the greenhouse frame, hasn’t started dying back at all yet and is clinging on to summer) and set the pumpkins out to cure in the porch, cut back some of the honeysuckle on the coldframe frame, cut…

MUSHROOMS

Just…. mushrooms. So many mushrooms. September has been Mushroom Month. It’s like we actually live in fairyland. So, a post dedicated to all the mushrooms I’ve spotted on our smallholding this month.

Thurs 30th August 2018

Today’s accidental gathering! Went out to look at the veg garden and ended up thinning the carrots and pulling a few stalks of wild onion (possibly allium canadense). Went out later on to smell the rain and regarded the tiny-plum tree and finally identified it as Purple Leaf Plum Tree which happens to have edible…

Weds 29 Aug 2018

Weekly Wednesday Snapshot Some before/after pictures, updates, snapshots. Cleared a LOT away in the “swamp” this week: willowherb, brambles, nightshade, bindweed and nettles. Discovered the willowherb pulls up quite easily by hand, which means no stubble left behind (which there is if I use a scythe). Was only aiming to get through to the apple…

Sat 9th June 2018

We have achieved, together, today. Steve and the kids had pancakes and I came in to see Erika happily trotting off to the sofa with her plate of pancake to sit and chew in peace (with the ipad!). I got the last of my plants in the ground, pulled a load of weeds out of…