What have you done in the garden today?

yesterday I cleaned out the eglu, the two large wooden houses, the walk in run and all the feeders and drinkers, filled 8 compost bins with assorted stuff, moved 8 wheel barrowloads of an old bonfire pile to somewhere else ( lots of digging involved), hand mowed around the potato patch ( the raised bed ones), tidied the barn and swept the paved areas, watered and fed the polytunnel and picked lots of stuff.

I also did lots of inside, housework...so I fell asleep on the sofa later on...

Hooray, I've got the kale in at last! Poor little seedlings have been dying to get out of their seed tray for quite some time now, so they're very happy in their new home, especially now it's raining.

And I've put out the rest of the leeks and cut some comfrey for comfrey tea. But then the baby woke up before I finished making it and now it's pouring with rain... a job to finish tomorrow. Still, it feels a bit like I'm getting on top of all the jobs at the moment. Phew!

Well done to all of us for doing stuff in our gardens

Found a bag of onion sets today. Is it too late to put them in or should I save them till next year. I can put them in a cold greenhouse if the weather gets too bad? Which it shouldn`t & we are right on the south coast.

Bung them in Pol, you might get something but if you leave them you wont!

A friend asked me the other day if I would like a compost bin!!!!!
So in readiness I have been levelling a patch of ground, digging the soil (which used to be a loam pile) into sacks which I will keep until I put my two new raised beds up in the autumn. The chickens enjoyed scratching in the new patch of bare soil, so everyone's a winner!

Did you say you were an MC?

You can NEVER have too many compost bins....

This is going to be my bark chippings bin.
My friend lives on her own, and complains that the stuff she puts into her bin doesn't rot down - it's a very large bin, and she doesn't have anough 'green' stuff to put in it. She would be better off with a worm bin I think. I'll suggest this (when once the bin is established at the end of my garden.....evil laugh!!!)

I have 24 bins and am building more...

Dug up another pound of potatoes from the dustbin. Still only about halfway down. I am so tempted to have a line of dustbins in the side passage & just plant potatoes in them in sequence, but I think the OH would not let me.

I only planted in the bin cos I had loads of veg peelings from veggie soups & the compost bin was full. What is in the bin now is gorgeous & loads of worms, so it worked in 2 ways for me.

Shhhhhhhhh don`t say anything too loud but OHs potatos did not do well at all.

My potatoes are finally out of the ground, so I now have space to plant some cabbages for the autumn/winter and some silver beet, which have all been waiting patiently in modules. (The silver beet was a present from a colleague at work who is from New Zealand)

Harvest day today - garlic up, first runners and french beans + more lettuce, spinach and the first nasturtium flowers. Nearly a meal's worth after a long wait for things to get going this year, so very nice day!

And found and squashed some cabbage white eggs, so feeling nice and on top of the caterpillar situation.

Loofahs in greenhouse are still not flowering, but are exuding some kind of colourless liquid from their buds which hoverflies are loving, so at least they're doing their bit for the beneficial insects of the garden.

Weeds are creeping back.

Hand mowed a lot of stuff. Cleaned out all the hen houses ( 5 in use at the moment!)

filled up 5 compost bins.

harvest loads of stuff, am too tired to remember what, but I know I need to make time to process it all tomorrow.

Wrote a proposal for a series of 20 week multi skills course which I now need to get accreditied ...did that in the garden under a tree, so it does count!

Sieved a lot of compost to put on the potato patch and other bits of the garden, mainly because I needed to empty the bin so that I could fill it with the contents of another compost bin!!! Organised bags of bark chippings and compost to another part of the garden so that Mr D can paint the back porch. Went into the old shed (partly brick built, probably Edwardian, very decrepit) - saw lots of c**p and a couple of things to Freecycle, shut the door again and put it off for another day. (Anyone nearby want a gent's cycle? Needs some TLC and rust remover. Free to a good home. Will put it on Freecycle next week)

I have done alot of looking I don't seem to have anytime at the mo.. between doing other people's gaardens, mine is right at the bottom of the pile.. but tonight, on my return after I've left, If you get what I mean, I shall try and sort it out a bit... mind you, looks kinda full with all the self sown, 6ft sunflowers

It sounds as if it's taking care of itself, Lottie!!

Done lots of little clearing up jobs today.

Have 1 round courgette at the moment, a couple of questions

how big should I let it grow

How long will it keep in the fridge (till the next one catches up)

I keep seeing the reference to Corguettes....and I keep wondering what it is, so I googled it....and it is.....a Zucchini! I thought it would be something really exotic...so I was a little disappointed, however.....I did learn something new today and that is always a treat!

Do you make Corguette (Zucchini) Bread? We always try to make it at least once or twice in the summer when we have more zucchini that we can possibly eat and it is such a delicious treat!

I only have a small garden Liz, so do not grow enough to make bread. In fact this is a first time for courgette, like to give new things a try.

polgara wrote:
Have 1 round courgette at the moment, a couple of questions

how big should I let it grow

How long will it keep in the fridge (till the next one catches up)

I've never grown round courgettes before - I've been trying to work out the relative sizes of long to round courgettes, and I would guess that you wouldn't want to let it grow bigger than a tennis ball. Courgettes will keep for a good couple of days in the fridge, so you should be able to let the others catch up!

I've spent part of the morning finishing off the reconstruction of our slate path. We had a very nice path from the back door to the outside toilet made from loose slate chippings. When I (very unwisely) let the chickens have the run of the whole garden last winter, they wrecked the path, scatching it up, pulling up the membrane from underneath and twisting it round, mixing the slate up with soil from the flowerbed, and for good measure mixing in the aubretia plant bits which they had trashed. It's taken a couple of long sessions on my knees, but it's now much tidier, and I have learnt my lesson regarding the chickens!!

I won't say it...

Have just planted the last of the bag of onions I found. The ones I planted earlier are growing nicely, so I live in hopes of a mild Autumn so I can get some extra ones.

The runners are begining to crop well & I am getting some in the freezer.

Still not a lot of luck with carrotts though.

I was well pleased this morning to spot that my row of Pak Choi have emerged. Especially so since the seed are self-saved from the pak choi which grew from a pack of mixed salad leaves that I grew last year and accidentally left to run to seed. The packet came free from Lakeland (talk about something for nothing !) and listed Canton white amongst its contents, so I guess that's what I've got

Yesterday I picked the last of my toms (mostly only vaguely ripe). They're now in a cardboard box understairs with a few ripe toms and I'll be using them as and when. I've cleared out the last of the chilli peppers as well and the plants have been giving their final resting place in my compost (the toms went to a separate compost area for my florals rather than my veg. Growhouses broken down and given a good clean then stored for next year.

Today I've done some weeding, harvested leeks for more leek and potato soup, put down some compost on my main bed and also netted and added some cut up lemon to try and discourage the cats from using it as a midden. I'm now turning my eye to my roses and wondering if I've got enough in bloom to get some rosepetal wine into the brew-jug but I'm thinking I've pretty much used as many spoons as I dare today.

My squash have been disappointing due to very short growing season (and horrible frost this spring). However at the local market today I was overjoyed to see some onion squash on offer and I happily grabbed three of them! I will have a regular supply of squash this year I hope, I'm soooooo tired of butternut!

2 nd early spuds finally lifted from the outside raised beds ( outside means outside the veg patch, nearer the wood.)

Looks like we have about 120 lbs to store so far, they are varieties which we know will keep. Early maincrop ( first lot) to lift in next week or two, then the second lot as late as we can, as they could do with as long and possible.

Have also been eating the spuds since June and selling some and gifting some, so the 36 original spuds I planted have probably each yielded around 5 lbs of spuds or more. This despite the rubbish weather, very dry so growth restricted!

The power of home made compost! Which is what they were grown in.

Harvested first ( very large) pumpkin. It was a "Tom Fox" and I have never had them ready this early.