Raspberries

I'm fast becoming convinced that my favourite part of our garden is the fruit. I love reaching that time of the year when you get a complete glut of one thing or another. The effort required to sustain them - pruning the trees, or tying up bushes, is minimal compared to the potential rewards.

At the moment this joy is coming from the raspberry canes as we go out every few days and collect another tub-full. Mostly we're just eating them, often with ice-cream. So good. There really is very little to beat soft fruit fresh from outside.

The hens, of course, would heartily agree. They are complete gluttons over all things fruity and always hang around while we're picking in case any manky bits get thrown their direction for them to fight over.

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Veggies, or a lack of...

Do you know what the most successful thing to come out of our veg plot was last year? Raspberries... yes, not even a vegetable! We had courgette plants eaten by slugs, sweetcorn that got to about half height then turned black, and leeks that looked more like spring onions. We also had a very poor germination rate for peas and beans both attempting to start them inside and then planted straight out. Generally not our finest year.

All of that caused us to take a step back and think about what we're working with. When we converted this area of the garden the soil was in a very poor state. We dug in a lot of compost initially and have done so a little more each year, but the reality is that the ground is probably in need of some T.L.C. 

So this year we're planting no vegetables at all. We're leaving the area fallow, though instead of leaving a nice empty space to fill with weeds we've planted green manure. A couple of cycles of that followed by a healthy dose of compost or manure and fingers crossed we'll have a better success rate with whatever we decide to grow next.

While that ticks over we'll be enjoying a regular box of fresh, seasonal vegetables from a local farmer instead, and looking forward to a good harvest of fruit from our various trees. 

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Hidcote Manor Gardens

A couple of weekends ago we took the opportunity of a sunny Saturday to take a trip to Hidcote. Just over an hours drive away, and conveniently National Trust where we have membership, we set out hoping to find ourselves some inspiration for our own garden, along with a good spot for a picnic!

Hidcote was the private garden of Lawrence Johnston who divided the whole area up into a series of rooms, each with it's own identity and character. While the arts and crafts styling wasn't what we wanted to achieve ourselves, we eventually stopped worrying about that and set to looking at how he had attained that unique feel to each space and found that a limited plant range, colour palate and textures seemed to be at least part of the key. On top of that there were a few themes that carried throughout the garden to give it a sense of unity. Brilliant planning on the part of Mr. Johnston.

Careful thought had also been given to the line of sight as you moved through the garden. High hedges and walls obscured your view in most directions, so when you did get a glimpse through you could be sure it was deliberate - a tantalising peek at what was to come next.

It's certainly given us some food for thought as we're in a definite planning stage with our own space. We often think about our garden as distinct areas, each with a different purpose - the veg patch, the chickens run, the pond, the patio, the lawn. The patio is next up for a change, but our trip to Hidcote has also inspired a look at our garden as a whole - thinking about the differences of these areas while considering themes we want to carry through each. Debating how each section works with it's neighbours and maybe planning a few tantalising sight lines of our own...

It proved to be a lovely day out, sunshine, plants and good food. Perfect.

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Wall Building

Where best to start blogging again than a project that's been going for almost as long as The Urban Cottage, and was finished just last week. We have a lot of projects around here that are half finished. Some tucked neatly away in a corner waiting for the right moment while some are deliberately left where we can't ignore them until they've been there long enough that that's exactly what we do. Some take forever in the planning stage, and some linger endlessly in the finishing stages.

This particular project has been all of those and more! Three years ago we were offered a large quantity of stone that we decided was just the thing for replacing a hedge we weren't particularly fond of. We sat it in an unused corner of the drive "temporarily". It's also been three years since we bought a set of lavender plugs to go in a new flower bed we would build with the stone and gave them a temporary home.

Skip on a bit to last summer when we moved all the stone onto our patio, sorted by size and shape. It took over the area somewhat! Then the old hedge came out thanks to brute force on Joe's part, and it was time to start being constructive. By the end of the summer we'd successfully put in the two smaller walls that now form flower beds alongside the drive, and had made a start on the main wall that will divide the front garden from the back. Progress at last.

Once more the project lay dormant, this time for a just a few months. Wind, rain and generally winter got in the way.

And then it was spring again. Looking at what to do next we decided it was more important to get the plants in place and finish the construction around them, than leave them in their rather overgrown temporary home any longer. The beds got a good filling of muck and grit and the lavender finally got space to breath. We also popped in quite a few allium bulbs that had been in the conservatory all winter and were starting to sprout. Both are showing excellent signs of new growth already which is very pleasing.

The last few weekends have been just right for a final push. Joe's steamed ahead and I think we can now say that is is done. All in all this has definitely been a successful transformation.

There's so much more to do in this area of the garden and we're both really excited by the blank canvas that this wall has given us. The phrase "courtyard garden" has been bandied about, sometimes accompanied by "Mediterranean"; we'll have to see where our ideas take us with this one.

Before:

After:

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Sewing the Seeds

Do you remember back in January how we wrote a post about getting on top of the garden? We'd ticked off lots of little jobs and were looking forward to what came next. Well what came next was - you guessed it - the bathroom, and we've not really been in the garden since. Our fairly sorted patio now has a toilet and sink sitting on it, and the old bath is still in the middle of the lawn!

Seed sewing time is upon us though, and regardless of the state of outside we're being hopeful and getting ourselves set up for another year of vegetable growing. We're using our conservatory as a greenhouse once more as this has worked well in the past. This year we've set up a simple set of shelves to rack up all our seedlings on, and over Easter we set about planting some veg.

So far we've sown these:

Broad Beans
Courgettes
Leeks
Peas
Pumpkins
Runner Beans
Salad Leaves
Squashes
Sweetcorn
Swiss Chard

It all sounds quite exciting when its laid out like that. We always try and grow those things that are nicest fresh, and that we eat lots of over the summer months, but this year we've expanded the list by trying to utilise every bit of space we've got, and also to pop in a few autumn and winter veggies too. Sounds like a plan to me....

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Hello Garden, it's been a while

Last year wasn't the best time for our garden. We gave it very little attention, all told. Our free weekends were mostly spent walking the hills around our Welsh home, and then we promptly upped and left for the whole Autumn. December seemed to run away with us, and now it's 2015 and it's a mess!

We've managed to put in a couple of Sunday afternoons work recently and already things are feeling better. We've been digging over what was left of our veggie patch, removing the remains of last years sunflowers, beans and spuds. Tidying up the edges and having empty beds full of freshly dug earth has made the world of difference to this area. The hens still have free reign in here too and and are enjoying digging over the freshly turned earth for us. Unfortunately we've also caught them helping themselves to the freshest tenderest parts of the purple sprouting which might be why we're not seeing any signs of shoots on that yet.

The fourth in our set of beds is still awash with little weeds and the dead remains of last years annuals - but the bulbs don't seem to care and are happily pushing through anyway.

Joe spliced in some new hazel sticks to the archway currently supporting our apple trees. Once they're big enough the two trees should be self supporting, but for now we needed to repair the damage done by high winds over the last few months, causing all of the top cross pieces to snap.

Talking of high winds, last winter we had many friends lose fence panels and kindly donate them to our wood burner cause (us included). Unfortunately they've spent the last year sitting on our patio waiting to be sorted but that's finally done and is no longer the eyesore it once was. We now have a good pile of wood ready for burning, a small pile that needs splitting into smaller pieces, and a bonfire pile of bits that are too thin to be worth the effort. We can now see most of the patio again! (Trust me in saying that this is an improvement - I don't have a "before" photo to demonstrate this).

Joe also set to our established fruit trees with some freshly sharpened secateurs, giving them a winter prune. The bird feeders have had a wash and are now back in position with fresh seed.

That sounds like a lot all listed out like that, but its only been a few hours work! Things are looking much tidier and while there are still quite a few jobs on the list it feels like we're now in a place to plan what we want to do with the space this year...

Feeling blown about...

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Photo Friday - Dahlia Mr Optimist

Bought last year for 50p in a sale and now flowering. Bargain!

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Photo Friday - Seeds

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June's Harvest

Summer is finally here and our soft fruit are piling in! There are plenty of trays now freezing for consumption later in the summer. Shades of pink also seem to be the colour of the month!

Cherries! The very first harvest from our cherry tree - 'summer sun'

Our mystery berry. Longer than a raspberry and much darker. Growing on a thornless vine too.

The first of the raspberries.

It''s Wimbledon so strawberries are obligatory.

Broad beans. Not pink I hear you say...

Pink!

Not as pink as the packet but then I don't like them old and tough.

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Round and round the garden....

It's been such a pleasant weekend hasn't it? So nice to see the sun shining. While we were out in the garden yesterday we realised it's been a while since we've shown you what's going on, so here's a round the garden trip of what we've been up to and what's looking good at the moment...

We've been planting out lots of our seedlings. Taking inspiration from the kitchen garden at Chatsworth house where they plant their veggies all mixed together in a radial format we've mixed up our purple sprouting, salad leaves and some flower seeds in a grid. We're hoping that it's all going to look very pretty in a few weeks time.

Our broad beans are doing very well. Unfortunately the peas we planted at the same time have been well and truely munched by the juvenile sparrows we've had around. Just not to be this year.

Being indecisive about where to plant out our sunflowers we eventually went for placing them all in a block in the middle of our veg patch. 

We've recently hung out a new bird feeder to cope with the influx of the aforementioned sparrows. They certainly come in flocks and still choose to squabble over one or two holes despite there being plenty of open ones. The chickens of course continue to feast from the rejects!

Well trained sparrows throw the bits they don't like to the chickens...

As part of all the clearing we did earlier in the year we revealed an acer that had previously been well hidden. It's thriving for the extra space.

Our alliums are looking as good as last year (sorry, not sure on the variety). I do love these flowers. 

We've been donated quite a few broken fence panels for our wood burner recently. While we're very grateful for the free fuel our patio does currently look like this:

The small bed in the front of the house is looking relatively tidy at the moment, with the climbing rose (Claire Austen) covered in flowers and the penstamen just coming into bloom too. 

We're very hopefully for a first cherry harvest this year. We planted this tree 18 months ago and it didn't try and fruit last summer. This time it's looking great.

The black peppermint is thriving this year. Joe has high hopes of a plentiful supply for peppermint tea.

And finally a few more plants in flower at the moment...

Last summers lavender plugs trying to flower already!

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