Garden Log - October and November

The imminent arrival of child number two has meant that the garden has been nearly as neglected as this blog of late. My time has been taken up with things like nursery painting, and hauling baby clothes out of the loft, not to mention trying to make sure that our two year old tank/elephant doesn't break the heavily pregnant missus too badly.... I still haven't managed to plant anything out, and I suspect that by this point I'm probably too late. I could theoretically still get some bulbs in, but realistically, that ain't gonna happen. The stuff in pots will just have to stay put until things warm up again. The only stuff I'll be really cross to lose will be the astrantia that I've grown from seed as they've taken the entire year to get to any sort of size, and I really want that in the garden. It'll probably be fine, but we shall see.

Garden Log - August 2013

Shock horror. A garden log posted in the month that's being written about! You may not see this again for some time...

Everything is looking and smelling fab this month, but there is a definite sense of things reaching a peak and winding down. The ornamental stuff has, for the most part, done better than I could have hoped. The veg on the other hand has been somewhat disappointing. A few strawberries earlier on in the year, and I'm getting a few courgettes and a bit of salad, but still no tomatoes. They're on the plant, but taking forever to ripen. I suspect this is probably down to the soil being a bit crap and nutrient starved. I've been reading about how last years constant deluge will have washed everything out of the soil so I'll have to take some steps to address this once things have died back a bit. My compost heap appears to be doing well, so I should have a good load of mulch to stick down, and the missus and I have been discussing building a raised veg bed in the border under the kitchen window which will allow me to import some good top soil and horse shit. None of this can hurt even if it doesn't improve things (which I doubt will be the case) so we shall see.

Without further ado, here are some pictures!

 

Challenge Fail

Ok, so I appear to have totally failed on the photo challenge. Seriously, who has time to do that every day as well as keeping up with real life!?

Anyhoo, some pics from this morning...

 

Garden Log - July 2013

Since we've come home from our little jaunt into the middle nowhere there hasn't been a single dry day. Not really complaining as A) we had lovely weather while we were away, and B) the garden REALLY needed it. The upshot of this has been that getting some non-soggy shots for this monthly update has had to wait a few days. That's this months excuse anyway.