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 (2011)

Right then, here is what the vegetable patch looks like in March 2011.  A bit grubbier than last year, and with leeks still in from last year.  (Not to mention some spring onions to the left of the leeks.)  Leeks are amazing.  They took all that winter threw at them and still bounced back.  A true winter vegetable.

It was time, though, to harvest these bad boys.  Evidently this wasn't fertile enough land for them, so they were more the size of over-large spring onions, but a crop is a crop.

They were immediately (later that day) made into a chicken and leek soup / broth / stew* (*delete as applicable).

It's mid-March and my plan this year was to use heated propagators (not even a tenner when on offer from B&Q) in the utility room.  It was the only sheltered but light place with enough space and a power source.  It worked reasonably well, but it wasn't light enough and the seedlings would tend to bend over.  My technique developed to waiting until the seeds germinated before transferring them to the greenhouse for the light.  Next year, I aim to get a power source into the greenhouse for the ultimate combination of light and heat.

Last year's baby blueberry plants are a lot bigger this year, although I don't really know what to do with them (trim there or whatever).

But they seem to be doing quite well without any assistance, one month later (mid-April).

Similarly, the rhubarb starts to make an appearance in March, having previously existed as a pink blob.

Five weeks later and it has exploded into life.  God bless nature...

On the left, some spring onions from last year that I haven't got round to pulling up.  On the right, garlic has come up on its own.  I did "lose" some garlic cloves last year and they seem to have come back with a vengeance this year.

Chives.  Always mental.  They need no encouragement.

Here is the greenhouse in April.  I had to scrub it to rid it (not entirely) of the green coating that had formed on both the outside and inside.  I also ditched the blue plastic floor covering, replacing it with stones, and in doing so switched the table over to the other side compared to last year.

The only tray I will show at this stage is the winter salad leaves that I have grown this time.  They are very susceptible to under-watering, wilting rapidly in that situation, but springing up shortly after glugging water into the tray.  In the end, I didn't actually get anything out of this as it bolted.  It has given me some ideas for next year, though.

One more tray to look at, this one tomatoes and peppers.  For some reason, I managed to sow a double row of one of them (at the back).  Not sure how I did that.

More soon.  Ish.

In May 2011, strong winds managed to wrench a large branch from one of the over-sized trees in the garden behind ours.  Oi, gerroff!  Luckily it missed my precious vegetable garden.

Strawberries are back (at the bottom) and I have planted some "first early" potatoes at the top of the screen.  In between, Dave Sills' nursery is on operation, although amusingly it has been overtaken by old potatoes that have sprouted up in between (since removed).

In early June, it was the cucumber plants that were winning the race.

Reassuringly, some of the sweet pepper plants were doing well this year.  Fingers crossed!

Here is (most of) the rest of the greenery.

A week or so later, and things are starting to rev up.

The raspberries I was less successful with, mainly since I neglected them and they all bowed over.  I got a handful at best.  I will do better next year.

Towards the end of July, the blueberry plants were doing nicely.

Here they are closer up, if a little blurry.  They have steadily darkened since.

My greenhouse had been taken over by this point (24th July).  The tomato plants on the left have gone crazy, although there aren't many actual tomatoes appearing.  On the right are a mix of sweet pepper, chilli and small cucumber plants, as well some basil and rosemary plants.

Here is one of the (few) tomatoes that have appeared, although that has improved since.  I'm just not yet that good at managing the plants by trimming them and pinching them out.

I had to move the cucumber plants out because there was just not enough room in the greenhouse to move around.  Here is the cucumber garden.  A number of cucumbers have already formed, although as soon as I move them out into the ground, they tend not to produce too many more cucumbers, and the lower leaves often die out.

Here is the first sweet pepper, with the second not too far behind.

Away from the vegetable patch, some of the roses are doing nicely.

That's it for now.

In mid-August, some of the tomatoes have grown gimongous!  They look a bit like pumpkins, although there are not quite *that* big yet.  Not showing any signs of ripening yet, though.

So I decided to help the ripening process, these tomato plants needed a-trimming.

To this.  Quite drastic, but needed.  There are some slightly crazy downward-hanging branches which are bent at the stem, but they are still producing tomatoes so I've left them.  Mostly I was just getting rid of dead-end branches and leaves.

The sweet peppers are coming on a treat.  Ripen please!

They are probably edible as they are, I would guess.  These chillies certainly are.  I realise now that I have three different types growing, which became apparent as they fruited.  These were the first, and this is even from quite a small plant.  At first when examining the plants it's hard to see that they are chillies, because they look a little like leaves from some views.  These are Cayenne chilli peppers.

These mighty ones I think are Jalapenos - they are pretty chunky.

And these are called Joe's Long, which are living up to their name.  Looking at the other plants, I seem to have a lot of these, or will have a lot of these anyway.

At this rate, I will easily have over 100 chillies, so I may need to be generous to ensure they all get eaten.  It's pretty amazing considering I got precisely zero last year.  They flowered but did not fruit.

And we're back.  I'm writing this bit in 2014, so I can look back on the summer of 2011 with a more balanced view, albeit with a fading memory of what actually happened.  I seem to remember getting quite a lot of chillies, but maybe not quite as many as 100.

In the show below, we finally have some ripening (plum) tomatoes, but I was beginning to realise that waiting for relatively large tomatoes to ripen requires a hell of a lot of patience, and sometimes just doesn't happen.

Here we have a nice contrast in colour, courtesy of some bell peppers.

I had discovered that germinating herbs, particularly rosemary, was also a patient man's game.  I did manage to get a couple of plants to this sort of size, although only one ultimately survived the winter (I still have it three years later although it hasn't really grown much - it's just a token gesture now).

This was some of my harvest from the summer of 2011, which was probably a wet, miserable one on average.  From left to right, a couple of cucumbers, some small onions, blueberries, chives, and a variety of chillies.

That's all I have from 2011.  It's hard to remember but I think I got a few cucumbers, although once planted outdoors they probably didn't do as well as in the confines of the greenhouse.  I don't think I got many ripe tomatoes and those that did ripen didn't taste amazing.

My recollection is that the potatoes weren't quite as large or numerous as the previous year.  Not sure why.  I had perhaps been a little bit distracted by the arrival of Daisy on the scene in March.  I think I had tried to plant peas in the ground but they didn't grow very well (next door's did brilliantly - all a bit random).

That brings us on to 2012.

Gardening (2012)

Taking advantage of the power supply I had could harness due to the outhouse being open (the door having blown clean off - see here), I bought a bunch of cheap heated propagators to hurry up the germination process.  That said, given that this is late March, progress has perhaps not been as stellar as I might have liked.

In late April, I had transferred many of the seedlings to pots and they were starting to show some decent growth.  From front to back, we have basil, tomatoes, maybe some parsley or coriander, chillies and peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, spring onions and peas.

This is the state of the blueberry bushes, also in late April.

The rhubarb has again started strongly.  It will be harvested soon.

The vegetable patch is looking a bit sorry, with some fairly weak-looking strawberries in the foreground, then leeks left in over the winter looking more like spring onions.  Behind them, towards the left, garlic makes an appearance.  It seems to do so annually, then it disappears before I can harvest it.  One of these days...

Another month on (end of May), and there has been a significant improvement in the growth of the various plants, with tomatoes and cucumbers mainly in view.

In mid-June, the longer days as ever lead to accelerated plant growth.  The tomato plants are bushing out.

On the table, the growth is less impressive, although there are a couple of chunky cucumber plants on the left.

Moving away from the vegetable patch and greenhouse just for a short while, here is the impressive climbing rose looking a little sinister in the evening light.

In early July, I have somewhat of a herb garden set up.  In the tray, rosemary, thyme and sage compete (all purchased as a present by Avis and Graham), whilst the pots contain parsley and/or coriander.

The pair of blueberry plants are doing nicely this summer.

My attempts to grow mint and sage were, initially at least, successful.  The mint just grew and grew and, in the end, perished.  Some of the sage plants, however, still survive to this day (er, the summer of 2014).

The vegetable patch looks somewhat untidy.  The raspberry plants have spread quite far off the fence.  To the left, peas, and to the right, potatoes.  Pretty much everywhere else, weeds.

Still in early July, this is what the greenhouse looks like.  It's becoming severely overgrown!  Cucumbers dominate the nearside, then maybe chilli and pepper plants, and some tomatoes in the background.

On the other side, even bigger cucumber and tomato plants.  However, it is mid-July, so I would expect them to be at least this big (if not bigger).

One of the great things about growing fruit and vegetables has been understanding the nature of nature.  With cucumbers, the yellow flowers give way to mini cucumbers.  Here's a close-up of that happening.

And I don't have any more photos of the back garden from that summer.  I've no idea why.  I can only assume that (a) I was distracted by other things and (b) things turned out a little more disappointing than was expected.  Instead, my attention can turn to the big rose bush at the front, obscuring our number 8 plaque.  Two rogue bits of the plant seem to be dominating (I think they are the fake ones that sometimes sprout - nature is weird).

And so that was that.  I think I got a few peas, cucumbers and tomatoes.  The potatoes were ok, but not as impressive as the previous year.  I got lots of small ones, I think.  It's all still a learning experience.  With Daisy being old enough to hang around in the garden but not be remotely interested in gardening as it was beyond her comprehension, I probably didn't really have the time or motivation to devote to it.

You can have a look at the next couple of years, or go back to the Secret Portal.