A post at last !!

I realise that I haven't been a very good blogger recently ! that goes for posting on my own blog and reading other blogs also.  I have been busy on the allotment and helping my son out with a recent house move, a niece's wedding in Italy, and clearing out my loft and selling things on e-bay which is all new to me. Some things I feel reluctant to sell, but hey ! they were only hanging about in my loft (for years) and I do need extra freezer space in the garage, so I thought why not sell a few items to help save up for a fridge/freezer for the garage to take all the extra fruit and veg I grew that had to be frozen. I am learning that if your not careful it can cost rather a lot to pay for all the bits and bobs (Insertion fees, photographs of the item, to name a few) to put things on e-bay and if one isn't careful you can actually be out of pocket if the item doesn't sell.

The allotment news is that most of my beds are cleared. I have halved my raspberry patch which had started off as 13 canes almost four years ago and ended up looking like a forest of canes which made it hard to harvest. I think I may have grown and planted too many globe artichokes, so I may take a few out as they take up so much space. But I wont  make the decision until next year or I may end up regretting it.

Today I went up to plant the garlic, a bit later than I planned but still within the time needed for them to go in.

I dug up all but five of my precious 'pink giraffe' dahlias and now have an amazing amount of tubers which all came from one plant purchased a few years back at the Hampton Court flower show. I still have a number of them flowering in my garden as well, so a good supply for next year. Here's a photo of the lovely flowers , as you can see they aren't your ordinary dahlia, the spikey flower is quite unusual and anyone seeing it for the first time always ask what it is and never recognise it as a dahlia, myself included when I first saw it.

The pumpkins and squashes were a little disappointing this year, but the little 'munchkins' squashes were good.

I have been thinking about what i want to grow next year on the plot and making lists and now need to plan what is going where. I'm not very organised with my planning and have to guess what went where last year and rotate my crops a bit haphazardly, so next year I intend to keep a proper record ( my inner voice is saying -YEAH YEAH, heard it all before !!!!!)  So that's about all my news and now I need to find time to have a read at what all you busy people have been up to and hopefully gleen a few tips and great ideas that you might have.
Have a great week-end
 M xx

Clearing up and putting to bed

It's that time again !! you know the time when the plot and the garden looks untidy, with dead or dying plants and it really all needs clearing up and putting to bed for the autumn and winter months. YEAH !! I look forward to doing this as it's a time of reflection and planning for next year.
My son moved recently and in the garden there was a brilliant cold frame that I had my eye on, sadly the elderly lady had died and her family didn't want it and left it behind.   So I have it now on the allotment  plot. I just need to buy some more glass and bits and bobs for it and it will be so handy. I love it.

We worked on the plot for two half days this week, pulling up plants that had finished, weeding (lots) covering some beds, moving my strawberry bed to somewhere sunnier and planting new runners and new varieties. I also planted a Victoria Plum tree that was in the sale at our local garden centre. It's in and staked and fingers crossed there will be plums next year as it is a mature potted tree.

The plum tree

The Cape gooseberry plant in the greenhouse has been very productive and I have had quite a number of fruits off it and there are still more to ripen. I will have another go growing another next year and put it in an even bigger pot and give it more room to grow.

Cape Gooseberries.

The chillies have been amazig this year. I grew about four different varieties, one in particular is VERY hot.



This year wasn't a successful year for the Pumpkins and squashes, but I have had some and they look lovely.

The Globe artichokes surprised me by having so many fruits on for their first year, but the hearts weren't very big and that's the best part for me especially pickled in olive oil and garlic. So I decided to not harvest this year and I allowed them to produce their amazing flowers. The bees love them and so do I.

And here is a photo of the plot looking tidy and although a bit bare there is still some things to pick for instance mangetout which is the second sowing and there is an amazing amount of spinach which is still producing tasty leaves. It looks even tidier now as the grass has been cut since the photo was taken.

That's about all my news for now. I know I have been a bit neglectful of the blog and my blog reading  recently, but we have been in London quite a bit.

I hope you have all had some wonderful harvests this year and if not ! Well there is always next year.

Where did the week go ?

I can't believe it's a week since I last posted ! I don't know about you but I am so fed up with the rain now !
OK it's good for the plants in moderation but these downpours have played havoc with the raspberries and the beans are going patchy and mouldy. I have actually dug up and composted so many plants as I can't bear to see the plot looking so untidy.

Next year we are planning to re-design the whole plot. The strawberry bed and the raspberries aren't getting enough sun and were a bit on the small side this year, so they have to be moved. In fact I think I will start again with some new strawberry plants from runners and different varieties of both raspberries and strawberries. I also want to make a larger cutting bed where I will grow my flowers in neat rows, rather than scattered all over the plot in different places. I cut enough Asters the other evening to fill three vases, they have been brilliant. I also had a decent harvest of veg,  photo below -

The raspberries were small, but are OK to make my favourite 'Raspberry Curd' I did get a few large ones from someone else to eat with ice cream. Those are the ones on top, my small squidgy ones are underneath getting even more squashed.  

Makes all the work worth while when I come home with this kind of pickings.

Have a good week-end

Allotment and Garden Update

After a very busy couple of months, two fabulous family weddings, (one being in Italy), I am finally back to my normal routine. Well almost !!  The allotment was so overgrown when we got back from Italy and finally managed to get up there.  I set about pulling up the onions and drying them off to store.  The mangetout were almost over and the next later sown three rows ready to be staked and netted.  I am still picking runner and french beans. There has been so many that my neighbours have benefited too.  The flower beds on the allotment are amazing, especially the 'Asters' the colours are beautiful.  Just look at this bouquet I cut last week and I have more dotted around the house too.

Aster 'Duchess Mixed'  from 'Wilko's'

The Globe Artichokes are a good size, but I really only love the hearts and they were a little disappointing when I cooked some of them  as the hearts weren't worth all the effort that the cooking took, maybe next year when the plants are a year old !!

The garlic has been brilliant this year as have the onions, so they should all last me until next year.

Courgettes, not too bad but nowhere near as prolific as in recent years, and tomatoes not as good as I usually get either. In fact last year I couldn't keep up with either and had to make pasta sauce and freeze in batches, Oh well !!

As for my garden this year it has been fantastic. I grew more flowers from seed than I have ever done in the past and the Asters and Zinnia's have been so beautiful. I will grow them every year from now on. The 'Cerinthe' is a lovely and prolific as ever, the spikey marigolds unusual and lovely as long lasting cut flowers. The Dahlias never cease to amaze me for their longevity and the most precious one for me is my very first which is 'Pink Giraffe'  have a look at this selection of photo's to see what I mean.

The Garden in Bloom

                                                                      

Calendula 'Porcupine' 

Sutton seeds

Zinnia - Sutton seeds

Zinnia (pastel shades)  'Faberge Mix' Sutton seeds

'Cerinthe'   seeds collected from previous years plants

'Cosmos' Millennium, Unwins seeds, these are bright beautiful shades of yellows through to oranges and the foliage is less feathery than the pink and white shades, it's more ferny, well worth growing they are lovely. ( sorry photo a bit blurry)

  Dahlia  'Pink Giraffe'

 I have been visiting and catching up with the blogs I usually read but apologise that I haven't had time to leave comments.  Sometimes I long for the autumn and winter months so that I can get back to some reading and my crafts.  I love the allotment and garden, but between visiting my family and spending days at my son's enjoying the grandchildren life gets hectic and I never seem to have time to fit everything in.

Have a lovely week-end and let's hope the sun shines !!!

R.I.P Amy

You had a troubled life and a struggle with your addictions, you had your faults but no-one is perfect ! Your voice was/ is amazing and you will never be forgotten, what a waste of a young and talented life . R.I.P Amy

Graffiti Art on a van in Camden where Amy lived and was loved. I took this photo when I visited Camden last year.

My faith in customer service has been restored

A few posts ago I wrote about painting my lovely Summerhouse, but I hadn't mentioned that we have had a lot of problems with the timber since it was first bought almost five years ago. Knots were falling out and leaving gaps, shrinkage in the timber that left gaps you could see daylight through and generally leaks in various places. The local company that we bought it from initially sent someone out a few times to put sealer in places to stop the leaks, but it never really did the trick, so we fell out of love with our Summerhouse and hardly used it anymore.

So this year we decided to re-clad the bad bits ourselves and then paint it outside and inside to give it a complete makeover. The trouble was we couldn't get the same tongue and groove cladding that matched the original wood. we tried everywhere locally.

So in desperation we bought something similar but it left us with a 2 inch gap at the top of the back of the Summerhouse, as the overlap wasn't the same as the original.   So we came to a halt in our makeover. I then decided to contact the Summerhouse manufacturer (Shires) direct and was given a contact to e-mail called Maggie. I had a lovely reply and an offer of replacement timber ! I can't tell you how amazed we were. After all this time of putting up with the problems I realise that I should have contacted Shires in the first place. Why on earth didn't I do that ?????

The timber arrived this morning  YEAH ! so we can now finish the job. Thanks to Shires generous after sales customer service and the very helpful Maggie .  Isn't it great to know that some companies do care about their customers satisfaction and their Company reputation. So a big big thank you to Shire Garden Buildings.

And here is a photo of the Summerhouse not finished yet, but now we have the wood it will be watertight and I can paint the inside cream and finish painting the back and the side. We look forward to using it all summer again.

Southampton Indian 'Mela' festival

We went to the Mela on Saturday and had a great time. It was colourful, loud, the food smelt and tasted delicious and the Indian Bollywood music playing on the main stage was great. There was lot's of handsome young Indian men showing off with their dancing and generally having fun.

The nicest part about the Mela is that it is always a big melting pot of cultures and peoples, all enjoying the festival.  Having missed the festival last year we noticed that it had changed and not for the better either.  There were lot's of fairground  rides, shooting galleries, ghost train, and other tacky things that made it seem more like a British fairground rather than the traditional Indian festival that it has been in the past.  Also missing was the more traditional Indian musicians. However it was still a pleasant experience and plenty of portaloos this time which was an improvement.  I hope they get comments about the lack of tradition and get it back for next year.  We had Lamb Biriyani for lunch which was superb.

I hope you enjoy these photo's.

The Main Stage

 Fabulous colourful clothes

Colourful headscarves

Henna Tattooist

Traditional Indian fabric detail

Traditional Dancers and band

Colourful festival goers

A music workshop

These are photo's from a previous year just to show the traditional musicians that were lacking this year.