...through the little gate, which my Patient Other Half (POH) made for me, to keep Daisy Dog out, as she loved to gallop around on the vegetable beds when she was a puppy.
And here we are! This is looking back towards the gate:
The vegetable garden is basically a large, long triangle. It is separate from the main garden, and hidden from the house (which helps when it isn't as tidy as it could be!) We are fortunate to have it, as we live in a fairly new build house, but have a fairly big garden. This piece of land was obviously a bit of a left over bit that the developers couldn't do much with, so they tacked it onto our plot, and it's marked on the deeds. We are so thankful!
It is also on quite a slope, so my very clever POH terraced it, and built raised beds, and steps between each level. It works brilliantly!
W used to have an allotment, but sadly lost that to development. However, POH took part of one of our greenhouses and built me a second little greenhouse, about 6 feet by 4 feet, to give me some extra indoor growing space. We have a 6 feet x 6 feet greenhouse in the main garden, in which I raise most of our bedding plants and vegetable plants in the spring, using it for tomatoes and chillies in the summer. The 'new' greenhouse has come into its own as a cucumber house this summer!
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| Cucumber 'Delizia F1' |
Not having the allotment anymore has made me very creative with space saving ideas in the vegetable garden. Runner beans grow brilliantly, scrambling across the two archways spanning the main path, and I also pinched this idea from RHS Harlow Carr - growing beans up a piece of trellis angled and tied to a couple of branches. I grow leeks underneath!
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| French Beans 'Cobra' - with a few sweet peas mixed in to aid pollination |
I grow more tomatoes in hanging baskets than I do in the greenhouse. These are a tumbling, basket variety, but I have forgotten the name! They are exceedingly sweet and juicy, and started cropping very early. I grew them from seed in early February.
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| Tumbling tomatoes in baskets |
Radishes work well in hanging baskets, as long as you keep them well watered (keeps them away from the slugs too!)
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| Radishes in a hanging basket |
One of the raised beds is really narrow, and doesn't get much sunlight. I have found it to be an ideal watercress bed though, and we have picked so much this year, it's been brilliant! I love the peppery taste of watercress and we eats loads of it.
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| The watercress bed |
The courgettes got off to a very slow start this year, but are now poviding more than enough!
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| I think these are 'Defender' but I have forgotten, and it's now raining, so I won't go back and look, if you don't mind :) |
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| Courgette 'de Nice Rond' - a round variety! |
I also have two patiogro racks - one in the vegetable garden, and another outside the house doors, for easy picking of salad crops, particularly on rainy days (like today!) I start new trays in the greenhouse, or coldframe, and once one tray is finished I swap it over, refresh the compost in the spent one and sow something else. It works a treat! This photo was taken in the spring:
Short rooted carrots grow well on the upper deck of the Patiogro, as it helps keep them out of reach of carrot fly.
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| Carrot 'Parmex' |
We eat heaps of mangetout and sugar snap peas, and they grow really well, as long as you add plenty of homemade compost and/or manure to the ground beforehand, and keep picking them regularly, making sure you don't miss any pods on the plants, otherwise they think their work is done and stop cropping!
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| Mangetout 'Kennedy' |
Talking about home made compost, I have tried various ways over the years, but find, for me, that worm composting works the best. I have four 'worm farms' and they work really hard eating all our veggie kitchen waste, newspapers, cardboard, egg shells, tea and coffee waste, non-woody prunings and clippings, and gone-to-seed vegetables. They produce the most amazingly rich, dark compost, which I spread over the vegetable beds, and the worms in the ground pull it into the soil. I like the company Worm City the best, as their worm bins are bigger, and the extra trays make it really space efficient. They also have lots of helpful information on getting started. I think it's amazing how much the worms consume, and how quickly they make the compost. I could say I'm very fond of the worms, but that would sound a bit weird...
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| The 'Engine Room' ! |
So, there you have it. My little piece of veggie heaven. I love, love, LOVE tripping down there every day to see what's new, as with all this rain and sun we've had, things are growing like Topsy!
One more photo left to show you. The Little Gem lettuces.. "One missing", I hear you say?? Yes, it's for tonight's dinner... :)
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| Little Gem lettuce |
Donna x
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