Carrots and Kids

A Weekly To Do List

Now this may seem utterly boring, but I am always so nosy that peeking at others' to do lists is not a chore. This is, of course, no ordinary one but my gardening list. Now that I am waking up a bit I need to Get Myself Sorted.

Of course, I could merely write it in a notebook but those have a habit of going missing or remaining unopened so if you do find it all tedious it's probably best to look away now...

• Take part in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend. It's only for an hour and I'm not overly hopeful about seeing much (particularly if our neighbour keeps up with his pneumatic drill) but still
• Start chitting my seed potatoes. As of writing I haven't bought any but am planning to nip to the garden centre to remedy this. As we all know, all work and no play is very boring
• Make some bird cakes
• Order my tomato seeds. Yes, I know I am horribly lax
• Sort out my greenhouse. You seriously do not want to see it as it is but I may post a picture of the result. After all, there's no point in all of us being depressed
• Have a bonfire. I have waited months, months I tell you, for The Husband to transport some very large cuttings from the front garden as promised. Now I'm taking matters into my own hands
• Finally, finally sort out a plan for the front. Quite frankly, I'm so fed up with it that I would happily restore it to its former "glory" of two small flower beds under the windows and lawn. Although don't hold me to that....

At my current work rate I reckon I should get one of the above crossed off. And that may well be the one involving me staring at birds from the comfort of a kitchen chair.

Why Tomato Plants Are Like Teenagers

It's not been a pretty sight in my greenhouse these last few days. When it rains, I do have a tendency not to remember to water the plants in there and...well, it got ugly.

So while I was hastily rectifying the situation last night, or at least trying to, splashing in puddles thanks to a leaky hose, getting muddy feet and ending up with dripping wet jeans, the situation reminded me of having a teenager. And, let's be thankful for small mercies, that helped me not to lose my sense of humour.

• They start out really small, full of potential and - WHAM! - before you know it they're massive. In some cases bigger than you
• They both take up a lot of space, a fact you are liable to forget until you're tripping over a sturdy tomato branch or gangly legs/strewn PE kit/bag left by the front door
• When they are tiny they are at their easiest. It is only when they start to grow that the worry really starts as they become susceptible to all sorts of nasties
• They consume a lot and need very frequent feeding
• Quietly observing, looking for early signs of trouble, is essential
• However, take your eye off them for a while and before you know it, there's trouble in paradise
• Too much interfering though could make them snap or be damaging to them
• Benign neglect is the key, but not too much (see, it's tricky)
• They need lots of support
• Never ever listen to advice or horror stories about them, it'll all be irrelevant and will put you off even starting on this journey
• Once you've sorted out one problem, blow me if another doesn't come galloping over the horizon. This can be alternately frustrating and tiring
• When you hit such a patch, you do begin to wonder what on earth possessed you?
• However, when you see the fruits of your labour, feel a rush of pride at what you've nurtured, then you know. It was all worth it.

Organised Greenhouses

I love my greenhouse, I really do. This is the first year where I've had it at the start of the growing season and it's been a joy.

Before next year's growing season gets under way, I'd like to buy some proper staging for it (recommendations welcome!) because at the moment I have my old grow house at the end, a table that's too big and a scaffold board on some bricks down the other side.

It's not ideal and there comes that crunch point where I need to get things in grow bags and properly planted while there are still seedlings needing shelter and warmth. It all adds up to a big balancing act.

If I won the lottery I think I would treat myself to a Gabriel Ash greenhouse. Oh my, they are lovely. One of the wonderful things about Chelsea is that you can find inspiration anywhere, including the trade stands.

 

There is a lot of useless stuff sold there, and some ordinary things and some really expensive products that I'm sure some visitors must actually buy. I'd love to know how many greenhouses are sold. It's brilliant seeing them in situ.

Even the traders make sure everything looks wonderful and I love, towards the end of my visit, wandering in and out of the greenhouses pretending, just for a minute or two, that they are mine.

The next best thing is to photograph my favourites. I've got a couple of good ideas this year doing this, including the old dustbin used to store long-handled tools (wonderful if, like me, you don't have a shed).

There was some pretty amazing staging too, grilled to let the water drip through, an old fire bucket put to good use and wooden seedling boxes everywhere. I would love some of those too.

Of course, all these wonderfully organised, expensive greenhouses can leave you with a case of the "I wants" but I'm keeping a lid on those, just, and trying to convert them to the "I'm going to try".

Welcome to Rubbish Gardener Planet

Do you like being busy? I don't. I feel all...disconnected and out of touch. And now I'm feeling very annoyed with myself.

I have been so busy. With the normal stuff as well as quite a few extras thrown in for good measure. I'm not so much out of touch as on a different planet all together.

The planet I am currently inhabiting is Rubbish Gardener Planet. You probably don't know it. Perhaps never even imagined it existed, let alone visited it. I just don't pop in now and again, I appear to have moved here.

You can tell when you've arrived by the number of dead seedlings littering the ground. It is very hot and dry and watering cans tumble down the streets like tumbleweed.

Turn a corner and you'll see a neglected allotment. One that will not be offering up trug after trug of gorgeous fruit and vegetables this year. Probably.

And you know the worst thing? The worst thing is that it is all my fault. I created Rubbish Gardener Planet. Without finding a special time machine here or one that can clone me, it looks as if I will be staying indefinitely.

A Pea Problem

At the risk of turning this blog into one all about peas and pigs (perhaps I should change the name?) I have a pea problem.

It's affected both sweet peas and sugar snap peas and is perplexing rather than monumentally awful but something has been nibbling the plants.

Well, when I say nibble I mean break off the tip and in the case of the sugar snap pea, eat the seed. I don't think it was a small creature of the two-legged variety as I've never known them to be destructive to plants.

Hubby thinks I have a rogue slug or snail (gasp!) in the greenhouse but they would eat the green tips. Plus they would eat them all.

So my money's on a mouse. Either living in there (eek!) or just visiting its own personal snack bar whenever they get the munchies. Although I did expect a mouse to eat them all...

Can anyone help? Does this look like the work of a mouse to you?

A Tale of Two Peas

I am not sure if I started off my sweet peas late. I know you can sow them in the autumn and I always mean to but never, ever do. Tut.

So I popped them in the compost at the beginning of March. Some went into the usual loo roll inners (I have loads now I can't use them at the school gardening club - Health and Safety reasons) and the rest went into some fab root trainers that I've never used before.

I took the loo rolls into the house with me as a bit of an experiment, I think. I can't really remember why I did but this seems likely and sounds vaguely good so I'll go with that.

The others were left in an unheated greenhouse. There wasn't even the protective cover over the growhouse in there. They were pretty much left to their own devices (so much so that a batch failed to germinate. See, rubbish at this gardening lark).

As you can see from the picture, the ones under my watchful eye inside grew up leggy and weedy and not very robust and the ones which were out of sight and out of mind have emerged later but strong and straight.

I'm sure there's a gardening and life lesson in there somewhere.

Tomato Seed Sowing

You may have noticed I'm running out of post titles. Well, not running out of exactly but sorely lacking in inspiration.

As you may have also guessed, I've started sowing my tomatoes. This year I bought some different ones. Others reading this might think "pah, different? I've been growing those since I was five" so I'll clarify - different to me.

Last year I sowed whatever came on the front of Gardeners' World magazine and there's nothing wrong with that. They were Gardener's Delight and they were. Very delightful. I also bought a couple of plants from the town WI plant stall.

It wasn't as if I hadn't grown my own, I had loads of the things but I didn't have very many different varieties. So this year I splashed out and bought chocolate cherry, jelly bean (yes they are for the children), red zebra and black krim (I think that's what it's called, I am too lazy to saunter to the greenhouse and check).

There will also be, because I haven't yet sown these, the usual delight and some yellow cherry toms. I know time is ticking on.

I've also changed my technique as I've mixed in some vermiculite with the compost (although I'm not sure this is necessary as they did fine without last year) and I've copied Gardeners' World and sowed in pots. Last year it was in rows in seed trays.

Which brings me on to my dilemma - how many should I sow? Obviously I have to allow for ones that don't come up but I'm also sowing for the school club too. I shall let the children have a go but I've got to bring them home to sit on my windowsills anyway so I'm thinking I'll just cut out the middle man....

Last year I had too many, this year I'm worried it won't be enough. Best I get back out there I think.

Mothering and Gardening

There are two things about having a large family. Well, there are lots really, but for now let's talk about two or we might be here a while.

One is that everyone thinks you're an expert on children. From the moment you have that final child, everyone, from midwives onwards, thinks you need no help and support. It's just one of a myriad of things that did not occur to me.

The second thing is people are always asking if you are going to have any more. Which is really annoying. As if that is all you can do or are interested in.

People probably ask that less now, as I'm looking old and haggered. And I did used to worry that I would always want more and more babies. I hear women now lament their broodiness, worrying that they will always feel this way.

But it occurred to me as I watched someone I used to go to school with cross the road in front of me, big children walking next to her, little ones in the double buggy, that you do stop. You do move on. And I'm glad I have. The vision shuffling behind the handles did not inspire anything other than relief, mean as that sounds.

I expect others have thought similarly of me, although I hope I have gone about my life with a bit more joie de vivre. Certainly, those first few years with a little one were, for me, blissful. Now as they get older I'm taking stock. My life is moving onto a new chapter as theirs' do.

All these thoughts popped into my mind as I waited for the lights to change. Along with gladness that I'd found gardening. It's given me another focus just when I needed it. I didn't realise, of course, that I would be needing it, but it's funny how things enter your life and you don't realise their impact or value at first.

It's not good for children to be their mother's sole focus, especially as they get older. I'm realising more and more they need an interested but vaguely distracted mum on the sidelines. Someone who is there but not there.

Cooking can serve that role but I find it a bit....soul destroying. Who eats what and how and why and who's going to do the dishwasher and oh-crikey-if-I-have-to-cook-prawns-and-pasta-one-more-time-I-shall-scream. Plus it's a vital necessity, one in which mothers are increasingly judged. Every time I step up to the Aga I feel I'm taking part in a contest I can never win.

But transplant me a few feet away to the greenhouse, with the radio happily burbling in the background, a puppy chewing twigs at my feet and seeds to push into the soil and I can accomplish that magical mothering act of being available at all times but invisible.

So even if nothing grows this year (I'm worried last year was a fluke), even though I really haven't got a clue what I'm doing, that someone is doing it better than me, that I seem to spend more than I save, I will still pick up my seed tin and head to the greenhouse.

Getting The Greenhouse Ready

I'm lazy. There, I've said it. While others spent the autumn clearing out their greenhouse, possibly getting it cosy for winter, I.....didn't.

I'm truly grateful for my greenhouse but, let's face it, without a proper door (the panels didn't arrive with the others when we bought it) it's usefulness had been limited.

It's also bereft of heat and that's the way it's going to stay. Installing electricity in it will, I think, prove costly and I'd feel bad about heating something that is not exactly well insulated.

So a cold greenhouse it is. When it snowed last month it was an even colder greenhouse as the weight of the white stuff popped out a couple of roof panels. B&Q sell glazing packs thank goodness (the company we bought it from online didn't even respond to emails) so we're good to go!

First though I needed to do a bit of sorting out. And rearranging. A couple of times in fact. I think I saw Hubby's eyes shoot upwards as I called him back to the greenhouse to help. He's been through this many times but usually it involves kitchens and Agas.

I don't have a proper potting bench; I have a rather bulky Ikea table covered with red and white polka dot oilskin and a grow house down the end. What I need, I've decided, is some of these  and one of these.

They will have to wait. For now we're all shipshape. And as luck would have it, it's the half-term so my chances of actually getting out there and doing stuff involving ripping open packets, delving into compost and patting down pots is slipping away from me.

Never mind, there's always the weekend. Hopefully.

Ten Things I'm Loving Right Now....

• The weather. How lovely is it? Making the most of summer's final days.
• The seeds just waiting for me to sow them. Think I might start on that just after I hit 'publish'.
• All the jobs I have to do at the allotment. Feels slightly overwhelming (in a Oh my goodness I don't know where to start so I don't think I will kind of way) but I like a challenge. Just as well. 
• My sweet peas. I know I keep on about these but.....well. They've finished at the plot but are still flowering at home. Lovely things.
• My ginger nut sunflowers. Definitely growing those again.
• Plans - deep red sunflowers, organising my greenhouse better, buying willow edging. Just dreams but good ones.
• Thinking about the front garden's redesign. It's been a long time coming. It is a total mess and it's stressful. Not in a major way but in a back of my mind, thinking about it every time I walk up the path kind of way. I can't wait until I have somewhere I can buy plants for, think about borders and colour schemes (there probably won't be one. Or there might). Ah, decisions, decisions.
• Sloe berries ripening.
• An old but new to me book about women gardeners and one on cold greenhouses. I have hit on a seam of golden gardening book treasure mined in a local second-hand book shop. I think Garden Monkey would like it.
• A neighbour's generous offer of quite a bit of topsoil surplus to his requirements. Just right for the school garden. I blogged about needing some and a couple of days later, I had a pile in my garden. Do you think it works for other things? Because, y'know, I also need that massive house for sale down the road....