Doing things in a different way

A different way of gardening.
 As I have mentioned before now we have had to move I have no real garden but I still want to grow my sweet  peas. I got permission when we came here to have a row at the bottom of the grass area in front of our flat. They did ok but I had very good plants to start with as I then had my greenhouse etc. to do the job properly. I have no greenhouse now but sowed the seeds as I always do on October 8th, from 50 seeds I have 49 plants, so far so good. The problem then came what to do with them, they were on a garden table but in danger of getting blown over in the strong wind. I have now planted them in the row where I hope they will grow and bloom. I have never planted this early before so will get some fleece to cover them should we get severe weather. I have taken a picture of them so you can follow their progress or failure as the case may be.

I did say I would follow through even if failure and that is what has happened. The plants were not looking too bad but severe weather was forecast so I used hoops and fleece as some protection. The wind one night partly opened one end and before I put it right a badger went in, could not find his way out so destroyed the lot. There are only two plants any good so I will be re-planting with some from a friend and I have sown a late batch of seed.

Amaryllis.

The bulb in this pot is about 12 years old if they are fed well after flowering for around 6 months and you leave the leaves to died back then they should flower and increase each year.

Changes in Gardening

My gardening life has changed rather recently, I have spent nearly all my life as gardener in private service. This has meant living in a tied house and when you change or lose your job you also change or lose your home. Thus happened to us in October 2010 when the person we had worked for for 25 years passed away. This has meant that from having as much garden as I wanted to having no garden at all.This has made me think of other ways to grow my begonias etc. Near our flat is an area of ground close to a very large pine tree, the area is full of large roots and could never be cultvated so I now have all my begonias in containers and made a feature of them on this unused ground .
To grow some vegetables I have taken on a small allotment which is in rather a bad state. Over the next few months I will post pictures to show progress, if any, with these ventures


It starts to look better as the plants grow but I will have to change the edging as the strimmer rips it part





So that we can have some vegetables I have taken on a small allotment which is in a very poor state but will try and follow through the year with both events.

Things are getting better. After I had planted the sweetcorn I am told that the badgers love sweetcorn, they wait until it is ready to harvest and then help themselves. I have put wire netting round in hope of getting some to eat. Have had good lettuce and fair potato crop so far but there is bad blight on one plot and nothing is being done to it so I exoect it will spread to all our plots.

Container grown potatoes

There seems to be a lot of interest in growing potatoes in containers. I did have details here a while ago so I am putting them in again.
I used a large plastic bin we had used for chicken food, I out a small layer of general purpose compost in the bottom. As the seed potato was fairly large I cut it in half and planted them a little way apart in He bottom. As this was in the greenhouse to start, as they grew I added more compost as you would if earthing up outside.Once they got too tall I put them outside but with fleece ready should we get a frost, at this time I had to support the foliage. We had almost a gale which damaged the foliage so I harvested earlier than I intended but you can see I got a very good crop from the one seed potato.