Monsters in the undergrowth

Oops, took my eye off the courgettes for five minutes.

Awesome sauce

A 3.5 kg pick from the Black from Tula toms today. Sauce, methinks.

Winter planning and planting (yes, really!)

Alrighty, winter vege a go-go! (Yes, if you want to grow them from seed now is the time.) I've got a big variety in as you can see, including my own red cabbage, lettuce, green mizuna, red mizuna, rocket, land cress, giant red mustard. Go mad with these and any other brassicas you love, as well as Florence fennel, celery, celeriac, spinach, chard, endives etc.

Happy new year, fellow garden denizens!

I've had a couple of extra tenants on my patch recently. My redcurrant bush has been host to a blackbird nest with two cute wee fledgelings, and it looks like today is going to be a big day for them!

They're out of the nest for the very first time, looking rather apprehensive,  and mum is calling them right now from the peach tree across the way. Good luck little ones!

I'd love to know what influences birds to feed from certain crops or not. The redcurrant bush is currently laden with fruit, and the raspberries next to it are still doing pretty well too, but the birds never seem to go for my berry crops. (Even when they're living there, it seems!) Yet I have several friends who have to net their berries assiduously every year to get even a few for themselves.

I count my blessings in this case, but what gets hammered in my garden instead is peas and lettuces. It's the sparrows that do 'em in, and I must say I don't think it's very neighbourly behaviour (sniff). Unless I net the pea plants from day one the poor things never get a chance to grow - they're just eaten down to nubs. If I net them until they're flowering they survive, but they still get ripped to shreds, reducing their crop significantly.

Oh well. I'm glad it's not the berries, anyway.

Poppy love

One of my favourite garden flowers is the poppy. Left to open pollinate, the range of colours and shapes that appear every season is stunningly varied.

I think this may be the most richly coloured, velvety poppy to open in my garden yet. The bumblebees are in love!





Love it too? You can nab my open-pollinated, gloriously varied Poppy Mix in my Felt shop today.

Ooops

Tactical gardening error: mulching the sweetcorn bed with straw my friends the chooks haven't inspected first. Baby barley looks remarkably like baby sweetcorn. (Funny that, them both being monocots and all.) Ah well, I guess I'll just have to wait until they get a bit bigger!

Hey, I wonder if the sweetcorn would coexist with the barley? I could have a mixed grains bed - and produce a teeny tiny amount of grain. :-)

I should run masterclasses

Gardening pro tip: if you're in the glasshouse watering stuff, a spur of the moment decision to try and hose off some of the guck from the ceiling will result in said water coming back down. Gosh, who would have guessed? Off to blow-dry my fur now.