Compost Watch 2009

5 Weeks have passed since my last post however I have been busy. I have been composting.

I have succeeded in achieving one of my new years resolutions in buying a cheap compost bin so I have setup a separate page on my blog dedicated to my quest for the finest and richest of all the mucks!

If you cannot contain your excitement, please head on over to the ‘Compost Bin‘ to find out how to setup your own compost bin, what to add and more about my project.

For the past two years on my vegetable plot, I have never quite got around to sorting out a compost bin. This is why I urge you to setup your own compost bin as think how much compost I could have made in 2 years! Go for it this year, setup your own compost bin and you could be saving money and recycling your kitchen and garden waste which is good for the environment and your wallet!

Kitchen and Garden waste = Free compost, that sounds like a great credit crunch idea to me.

Where do we start?

1. Introduction to my Compost Bin
2. How to build your own wooden compost bin.
3. Buying your own compost bin.
4. What can I put into my Compost Bin?
5. My Compost Watch Project – updated every week with photos and contents.

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This post has now moved to my new site iGrowVeg.com.
Please view the new post on the link below:

• Compost Watch 2009

Veggy Plot pictures and pages updated 17.01.09

Finally a break in the weather on a bitterly cold but fine sunny day means I have managed to take some new photos (with my new camera, a xmas present) of my vegetable plots for 2009 to see how they have survived through the winter.

So here goes (click on the pictures to enlarge them):-

Plot 1 Broad Beans and Peas

Plot 2 – Carrots and Onions

Plot 3 – Cabbages

Everything seems to be growing strongly thanks to my homemade fleece cloches – click here if you would like to know how to make your own small fleece cloche.

All my vegetables have survived the winter frosts unlike my poor frost bitten mallow (lavatera) shrub in the plant border.

New Blog Pages for 2009

I have had a bit of a spring clean with my blog and added some new information to the pages. I have setup 3 individual pages for each plot this year to record my sowing and harvest dates with slideshows:

• Plot 1 – Beans and Peas,
• Plot 2 – Roots and Onions,
• Plot 3 – Brassicas.

My About Me page now has details about my vegetable plot and a picture of all three plots.

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This post has now moved to my new site iGrowVeg.com.
Please view the new post on the link below:

• Veggy Plot Pictures and Pages Updated 17.01.09

Butternut Squash and Sunflowers

Butternut Squash

I am very happy to see some small butternut squashes forming on the 2 plants which survived my over-watering. (see above pictures)

In February when I was keen to get sowing, I hadn’t read up on how to grow squash by the time I put the first seeds into the pots and constantly kept watering it wondering why no seedling were appearing. Then someone told me they rot in soil that is cold and wet. Thats exactly what mine were doing without me releasing it.

So in March when the weather warmed up slightly I tried again and didn’t water the hell out of them and to my surprise they survived, needless to say I have nurtured them very carefully ever since.

Sunflower Competition – Results

And the results of the annual household Sunflower competition are…. I lost and my other half won. My sunflowers shirvelled up in the heat and my other half’s sunflowers have flourish with one flowering and the other just about to. You win some and loose some!

Heres the sunflower lineup: (click on the photo for larger picture)

I am hoping to harvest the sunflower seeds when the flower-head dies to start again next year!

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This post has now moved to my new site iGrowVeg.com.
Please view the new post on the link below:

• Butternut Squash and Sunflowers

Tomato’s, Cucumbers, Peppers and Sunflowers on the Deck

I potted on my Tomato’s (golden sunrise or green zebra) and Cucumbers (marketmore) last week and wanted to place them on the decking to get the most amount of sun possible. However under the decking in the dark only coming out at night or in heavy rainfall lurk the slimy ones. Those creatures who shall remain nameless are becoming almost celebrity status with all the press coverage recently (Daily Mail article 18.06.08).

I did a bit of recycling with my old 3 tier mini greenhouse. I broke apart the unit so that the 3 shelves and racks were separate. I laid down some old fleece onto the decking to stop the blighters from coming up in between the decking. Then I placed the racking down onto the fleece and the tomatos and cucumbers onto the racking.

Of course I’m thinking theres no way a slug can climb that racking (all that slime and no grip on thin metal squares), so prey tell me how the bloomin hell do they manage to get in the pots? mind you I think it has fooled some of the less energetic ones as I’ve only found a few evil knievel slugs so far.

And lets check on the sweet peppers:

And finally the household Sunflower competition.

My dad gave us some sunflower seeds he received free in his local newspaper a year ago. I’ve only just got round to sowing them so I made a bit of a competition out of it between me and my other half. We sowed 2 seeds each and they will be going into the flower border soon so here are the results so far:

Tracey’s on the left and Colin’s on the right. At the moment and rightly so being the gardener of the house, I definitely have a slight lead by a few centimeters.
(I’m ignoring the cries of its a fix from the workshop!)

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This post has now moved to my new site iGrowVeg.com.
Please view the new post on the link below:

• Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Peppers and Sunflowers on the Deck

Heavy Rain suspended work on veg plot so now for some replays

In true Wimbledon style, (no, I haven’t been singing cliff richard songs to clear the clouds) all weekend activities have been suspended and my hopes of doing any gardening or maintenance on the veggy plots were washed away with the very heavy rain.

Instead I will be showing some delightful pictures of my purchases at last weeks Essex Garden Show in Brentwood.

Weeping Willow dwarf tree (Salix caprea Kilmarnock) (£10 bargin)

Weekend Recycling BBQ Flower Project

Last week we cleared out the back of our garden and took the rubbish to the local household refuse site. However I decided to save our old rusty BBQ with pine under-shelf from a fate worse than the crusher and re-use it as a plant stand. My challenge was to hide the rust and add some colourful plants on a very small budget, so heres how I did it.

What you will need is:

1. An old rusty BBQ,
2. Some terra-cotta or plastic plant pots,
3. Lots of stones from the garden (ours has more than its fair share!),
4. Compost,
5. Cheap Plants from the market or local garden centre i.e. violas, ivy, dianthus, herbs.