8 Denby Lane

Heaton Chapel

empty house (2009) ◊ moving in (2009) ◊ winter (2009) ◊ furnished (2010) ◊ gardening (2010) ◊ decorating (2010) ◊ decorating (2010 to 2014) ◊ gardening (2011 & 2012) ◊ landscaping (2012 & 2013) ◊ gardening (2013 & 2014)

Gardening (2010)

Now it's the summer, it's time to get out in the garden.  We've seen shots of the garden when we just moved in, and also in the thick of winter, but it's time to get my hands dirty.  Confession time.  We have kept on the gardener who has been working on the garden for around eight years.  Given that we would have enough trouble looking after the rest of the house, it seemed to make sense.  Despite this, I would look after the vegetable patch.  Given that I know nothing about growing fruit or vegetables, it is bound to be a challenge.

First of all, a glimpse of our deluxe gardening furniture and snazzy Weber barbecue.  Shiny.

When up in Aberfeldy, I was kindly given two blueberry plants from the Mcdiarmid farm by Calum, my cousin-in-law.  Here they are, pretty much as I got them, having survived the 300 mile journey back to Heaton Chapel.  Looking pretty sparse right now (17 April).

Slowly but surely, having been bedded into some ericaceous (acidic to you and me) compost.  There are people, and I am one of them, who would never thought I would be using the word ericaceous.  But here we are.  It's a whole new language, really, with words such as mulch.  Whilst one (the right hand plant) developed red leaves, the other had green leaves (8 May).

But it wasn't long before some proper foliage started appearing (23 May).  Rejoice!

On to the centrepiece, the vegetable patch itself.  Having divided it up with wardrobe doors from the guest bedroom (more on the decoration progress, or lack of it, in due course), I started planting away.  First up, potatoes, planted from sets (17 April).  Not a lot of action yet, unsurprisingly.

Slowly but surely, they poked their green little heads above the soil (8 May).  Good job, too - I was becoming impatient.

I also planted some onions and shallots (both from sets), leeks, carrots, cos lettuce, spring onions and coriander (all from seeds), and garlic (from supermarket cloves, although they don't recommend that due to the potential for disease).  You may be able to make out a little bit of action from the shallots (second row, front), spinach (second row, rear) and garlic (fourth row, rear).  But you have to squint a bit.

A couple of weeks later (23 May) and things were really starting to come on.  They first enjoyed some heavy rain and then a glorious period of sunshine, it seemed.  Here are the potatoes, basking in the evening sun.  I had even started to raise up the soil levels, as per instructions.  (In the background, you can see the strawberry plants.)

Two rows of onions, bending slightly for whatever reason.  They are just not strong enough to hold up by themselves, really.  Not sure if that really matters.  The shallots in the third row are firing on all cylinders, though.  They did get a better start as the shallot sets were quite large. basically shallot size, whereas the onion sets were weeny.  You can't really see the leeks, which at this point look like isolated bits of grass, but then they did come from seeds.

The garlic in the foreground is clearly the most impressive display here, although the spinach isn't doing badly.  You can make out the grass-like growth of the spring onions on the back row, behind the spinach, and the carrots and coriander are also showing consistent sprouting.  The cos lettuce, however, is not really showing me anything right now.  I may have to try to grow some indoors.  Or perhaps the slugs have eaten it already, although that would be a bit premature, I think.

A nearby friend, David Sills, a more experienced grower than I (although that pretty much applies to everyone who has grown anything) has been awarded a section of the vegetable patch to plant out his runner bean, cucumber and tomato plants.  I cannot match these plants for growth at this stage, as we shall see shortly.

The potatoes now (6 June) are really starting to gain some height, so I keep mounding them up (which is apparently what you have to do).

And just a week later, on 13 June, here are the potatoes again.  They've shot up, having really enjoyed the rain.

On to the gardener's lab, the greenhouse.  When you buy a house that already has a greenhouse in the garden, you have to use it, don't you?  It's compulsory, right?

I started sowing seeds in April (I think), but I was pretty clueless.  Germination was hampered by the compost drying out and it took a while for anything to happen.  Slowly but surely, with an amateurish covering of clingfilm, enough moisture was retained and shoots began to appear.  Firstly, an array of basil shoots popped up, with two little leaves each, then some of the tomatoes, chillies and peppers followed suit.  Less forthcoming were the other herbs: mint, parsley and rosemary.  Here is the scene from back in mid-April.

Five weeks on, and things have grown nicely.  Firstly, basil.  It was interesting to watch how it grew.  After the initial two leaves, two further leaves sprouted to form a cross shape.  Then the original two leaves grew again to be considerably larger than the other two.  I planted out 3 or 4 seedlings in five 3" pots, and here are two of them.  They have even begun to smell like basil should.  I will transfer them to larger pots soon as they are getting a little big for these.

Here is my tomato farm.  From the trays that I thought would never give me anything, I now have three fairly strong-looking tomato plants, with multi-layered leaf structures.  Two more appeared but they are not looking good.  Not sure why they don't want to grow.

And finally, the chillies, peppers and, a recent addition, cucumber.  Unfortunately, I do not know which are the chillies and which are the sweet peppers.  The four at the back left are all of one type, and the one at the back right is of the other.  The remaining six plants are all cucumbers, which have grown at a ridiculous speed (this is not much more than two weeks' growth, I think).  Again, they all follow the two-leaf pattern, with a third beginning to sprout out.

I will probably try planting some a couple more trays to see if I can get any more going.  The next set of photos will show the fruit and vegetable plants that were here when I arrived (not counting the odd potato that seems to be randomly sprouting up in the vegetable patch), i.e. chives, strawberries, raspberries and rhubarb (the latter of which has even produced a harvest already).

But first, here is where the greenhouse production line is up to (6 June).  Tomatoes in the foreground, then peppers and chillies, then cucumbers, and finally basil.

Ok, there were a number of things already growing when we got here.  In fact, clueless as I was, I did not figure out for a good while that the uncontrollable patch of grass that was growing was in fact chives (shown here on 23 May in the top left, with the strawberries in front).  The chives are relentless growers and have provided a number of harvests already.  Just keep cutting them down and the grow straight back up again!

The strawberries are doing well this year it seems.  By 13 June, small green strawberries have appeared.  Shouldn't be too long now!

And the raspberries, also there when we got here, looking a bit sparse back on 8 May.

But now also showing signs of fruiting.

Next up: the rhubarb, which was the first to really get going (apart from the chives, but they are what they are).  It was pretty spectacular even back in early spring (8th May).

So much so that it was time for an early harvest.  This is my first proper crop of the year (and, in fact, ever)...

...which, due to an aversion to the non-pink bits and a high water content, was converted to a rhubarb crumble that was much more crumble that it was rhubarb.

And that will do for now.  I will do another gardening update later in the year.  Next up, our decorating exploits.

Actually, now seems a good time to give an update as things are moving quickly.  Here, on 20 June, is a shot of the vegetable patch.  Potatoes front left; then, in the next section, leeks (barely visible), shallots, onions; behind them, spring onions (barely visible), spinach, garlic); top right hand corner, peas, potatoes, shallots, onions; and finally, by the fence, raspberries.

And here is the plant lab.  The bigger plants have been moved to bigger pots and they are loving the new-found space.  Front to back, chillies and/or peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, basil.  I plan to move the tomatoes to grow bags shortly.  I need a plan for the cucumbers as the leaves are getting big and I'm running out of space.  I have also sewn another batch of seeds in the propagator.

And that will do for this short report.  Until... midsummer took over and the plants leapt up the lengthened days of glorious sunshine.  That there is the growth from just SIX days...  I was quickly running out of room for everything.  It was time for action.

The tomato and cucumber plants grew and grew, some needing transferral to the ground.

Mid-July and the vegetable patch is looking pretty built up, mainly courtesy of the potatoes in the foreground.  At the back, on the canes, you can just about make out some pea plants.

My attempts to fend off birds from the raspberries were pretty pathetic.  In actual fact, they didn't really go for the raspberries, favouring the big juicy strawberries (the buggers).

Here we have the onions, shallots, etc.  The leeks (down the left channel) haven't even popped up, but the onions, shallots, etc. are nearly ready.

Out of the greenhouse, five cucumber plants made it to the vegetable patch, and did fairly well.  Unfortunately, I don't like cucumbers, so many of them became gifts, including a birthday present cucumber for Rachel.

The tomato plants, probably not robust enough to survive outside, were put into growbags.  It was amazing to see them appear where flowers once were.  Alas, the summer was not long enough to ripen the tomatoes.  So most of the green tomatoes never went red.  Sob.

The potato patch was soon harvested (by mid-August), yielding a good selection of about 50 potatoes in all.  The pea plants are doing well in the background.

A close-up of one of the cucumbers, which are a lot pricklier than can be bought in the supermarkets, and they had thicker skins too (apparently - I didn't try one).

And the last shot I have is of a Cos lettuce, with a carrot plant in the background.

And that's all that I have 2010.  There were ups, there were downs.  There was a lot of learning done.  My overall crop came out at something like:

50 potatoes, 20 onions, 20 shallots, 10 cucumbers, 10 tomatoes, 8 stalks of rhubarb, a dozen pea pods, some handfuls of strawberries and raspberries, some spring onions, a Cos lettuce, a small carrot and LOTS of chives.

I will put some 2011 gardening photos on shortly.  (Update: they're on.)