welcome to my little suburban oasis, filled with flowers,fruit trees and vegetables

Monday 30 January 2012

Sowing for Summer

It's cold this week, frost forecast, possibly a little snow but the sun was shining this afternoon so I decided it was time to start sowing seed.
I set the first last week - ailsa craig onions. Today was the turn of hot weather veg (or are they all fruits?) - tomatoes, peppers, chillies and aubergines. All in small pots in a propagator and then in the bottom of the airing cupboard which will be nice and warm as the heating needs to be on.
Now I just need to sit back and wait for Summer.

Sunday 29 January 2012

picked this week

Loving the mild winter - more brussels picked this week




and a rather small, slightly frosted cauliflower.

Still using up last week's parsnips.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Frosty Flowers


Last week there were calendulas just beginning to flower - totally the wrong time of year of course and I thought it best, with frost forecast, to move their pot to the greenhouse.

Even in there, they've been caught by the sudden drop in temperature. Hopefully they'll survive another day or so till the weather warms again.


The snowdrops have to stay outside - but will be ok.

Tuesday 17 January 2012

Sunday 15 January 2012

picked this week

Winter has been very mild up to the last couple of days and things at the allotment are growing well without us putting in any effort! We went down at the beginning of the week and had a busy time cropping - an almost too-far-open cauliflower








autumn broccoli - it's been cropping on and off since autumn, probably only doing so well now as the weather is so mild.










more brussels sprouts - bigger now than those I picked for Christmas











parsnips and italian radishes, if you can see through the dirt. I have to grow more of these radishes next year, they've grown far better than normal round radishes would at this time of year. I also have a packet of blue German Herbst und Winter radishes that I forgot to set and should be good winter croppers.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

January flowers

The weirdly warm weather continues though slight frosts are forecast for weekend. Meanwhile honesty and crocuses are flowering!

Thursday 5 January 2012

Wind

It's been a little windy over the post few days. Not as dreadful here as elsewhere, but today has been a day of blown over dustbins and rubbish rattling down the street.

I, at last, moved the last patio chairs inside to avoid them rolling round the garden but there's not a lot to do with the birdtable.

It's now having a little lie down.
The feeding table has fallen off and one of the legs is broken - again!


The new second-hand plastic greenhouse fell over in the last blast of wind a couple of weeks ago. Look carefully and you can see it just missed the winter cabbages - so I left it lying down. I'm glad I did as this week's wind would have brought it down again and probably not missed the plants.

Wednesday 4 January 2012

New Year Flowers


It's been a very mild winter so far - especially compared to last year - and a surprising number of plants were in flower at New Year - jasmine and rosemary might be expected but there were (rather tattered) roses, feverfew, buds on calendulas still hanging on from last year and forsythia, bergenia and snowdrop buds turning up early - even daffodil shoots up and strawberries!