Friday, May 28, 2010

Gardeners Questionable Time...

While tending the grounds of Seany Towers this morning, I realised that it's probably time I posted some more pics of how a few things have been growing in the last month or so.

Starting with the veg bed, there are definite signs of life. From the bottom upwards, there are white onions, carrots, red onions, cabbage, spinach, radish and lettuce. The only no shows so far are the fennel seeds at the far end, but they were only planted a week or so ago as an afterthought.

First seeds were planted down the left hand side and three weeks later, the second set were planted down the centre. In a couple of weeks time I'll plant the final set down the right hand side, so if everything grows to plan, I'll have a more even supply rather than a sudden veg and salad mountain.
















The two apple trees finally bloomed (although not shown on these pics), hopefully a sign of some fruit to be expected from them later this year and the oak has finally sprouted leaves so I'm happy that it's survived the move from Mum & Dad's now.























The little blue spruce has suddenly burst into life and adopted a new pale green identity. Although I'm pleased to see it's unexpectedly grown so soon, I'm also curious to see when (or perhaps whether) it will turn back blue again.









In the greenhouse, all of the seeds have been a qualified disaster, the only ones to have really come to anything are the spring onions, of which there are now two pots of them growing











The garlic is coming on rather well too with 5 plants growing nicely and a 6th shoot just appearing above the soil line


I'm at a loss to understand why the seeds in the greenhouse have failed in such quantities, so I've cheated and bought a few plants for the growbags. On the left from top to bottom are green peppers, red peppers and chilli peppers. These have already proved popular with the local slugs, having almost completely finished off the chilli pepper plant. After an unsuccessful eco-friendly approach using egg shell, I've finally resorted to slug pellets to keep the greedy little blighters off, but the other two have grown considerably.

The next round of "cheats" was buying tomato plants, from top to bottom being pixie tomatoes, beef tomatoes and ailsa craigs. The pixie tomato is a strange little plant having refused to grow in any direction but has plenty of flowers on it, so we'll see how effective it is at bearing fruit.






The final seed cheat occurred after I spotted B&Q selling little herb plants, six for a fiver (cheaper than I'd previously paid for the seeds!) So combined with some cuttings from Mum & Dads and a couple I'd bought earlier, the herb "garden" now consists of ten planters containing chives, lemon balm, lemon thyme, Moroccan mint, oregano, parsley (flat & curly), rosemary, tarragon and thyme.


Quite honestly, I'm not entirely sure when I turned into the bloke who could identify plants and the various birds that frequent the garden and secretly hope I'm still not the one who'd openly admit to enjoying it.

I really must get myself a job sorted out soon. In fact, there may finally be some news to share soon, but more about that next time...

2 comments:

delcatto said...

It does look good Seany. I hope it's good news on the work front as that beer, condom and mattress tester.

Seany said...

Still scanning the jobs pages for that one!