Converting my suburban garden in North East England into a food producing garden. We are UK planting zone 9a
A couple of weeks ago I popped 4 Marketmore cucumber seeds in a pot and stood the pot in my porch. Yesterday I noticed that three of them had sprouted. This morning I brought a large pot and an obelisk into the porch and I've carefully transferred the tiny seedlings into the pot. Last year I had 🥒 in November so I'm hoping to have some this year too.
A couple of weeks ago I sowed some carrot seed in the hope that I might get baby carrots for Christmas. I'm chuffed to bits to see that they are starting to sprout. If we get some decent weather for a few weeks they'll be able to grow away nicely. The slug tally last night was 20. We got 40 on Monday night. That's well over a thousand in a fortnight. The numbers do seem to be reducing each night so hopefully we're on top of the problem now.
Yesterday I made a big pan of chorizo and vegetable soup as I had a slightly wilting head of shop bought lettuce to use up. From the garden I harvested potatoes, courgettes, carrots and a big handful each of French and runner beans. I also added some shredded lettuce leaves. I took a couple of home grown onions and some garlic from my store and the soup was a really tasty one.
Tonight for tea I fried a couple of steaks with some of my home grown onions. I boiled a few freshly harvested potatoes and steamed some beautiful French beans over the top of the pan. While it was cooking I shredded a couple of different lettuce leaves and a couple of green pakchoi leaves. I tossed them with Brad's Atomic grape tomatoes and some yellow ones that I'd grown from saved seed. The Brad's Atomic grape are on my definitely growing again list for next year. I don't think I'll ever grow tired of growing and picking fresh veg from my garden.
It's been a funny old summer so far. My strawberries have been fantastic but the swede have come to nothing. The slugs have decimated many of my crops but we're fighting back and have despatch nearly a thousand of the slimy little so and so's. We caught 212 one night and average about 70 each night.
My Greenstalk planters have been a real game changer in the way that I garden. In fact I have two more that are due to arrive today so I've been switching things around in the garden to make space for them
I keep forgetting to update this section of my blog because I tend to record all the details on my YouTube channel. We have big plans for the garden in the autumn but in the meantime this is how it looks right now. We moved the Greenstalk out of the porch yesterday and it is now in the garden
And here's the YouTube link in case you'd prefer a walk around the garden
In just over a week the baby ladybirds have gone from being the size of a pin head to the size of an earwig. I love watching them charging up and down the leaves munching every aphid that gets in the way. They remind me of those robotic vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers.
I've been sitting watching a ladybird shed its skin today. I was amazed to discover that they emerge white and over about an hour they turn black.
