Month: March 2016

Greenhouse Tour…

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There’s no better feeling than the sun shining and being in the greenhouse with the unmistakable scent of tomato plants!

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We bought our first house in December 2011, complete with a 12ft x 8ft greenhouse, which we moved early in 2015. The first year I only grew two tomato plants, which my Father in Law brought home from the local allotment. Since then I’ve been hooked! I’ve grown several different varieties of Tomatoes, Melons, Butternut Squash & Strawberries. I’ve also grown Peppers & Chillies (without much success).

I’ve started growing garden peas in plastic guttering attached to the inside of the greenhouse frame which will later been moved into the beds.

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This year will be the first year growing in the raised beds – I’ve already got some Garlic and Onions growing in there, I’ve sown some Gem Lettuce earlier this week. The other raised bed remains empty for now, I’ve got a couple of cloches warming up the soil up ready for the Carrots, Beetroot, Leeks, Celery to name a few.

Hope you enjoy the short video tour of the greenhouse!

 

 

 

 

Easter Weekend…

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So we had big plans for this Easter Bank Holiday. The plan was to erect a metal arch way in front of the raised beds. We bought four 7Tt wooden posts to attach some heavy duty wire mesh onto. These we concreted into the ground on Good Friday and left to set for 2 days. On Easter Sunday we had planned to fix the wire mesh onto the wood thinking this would be an easy job…. how wrong were we! The wire mess doesn’t quite have enough rigidity in the center to maintain a perfect arch. After several hours tweaking the angles and thinking of ways to reinforce the arch, we  have come up with the plan to add aluminium strips to the front and back of the arch to give it the much needed support.  So for now the arch will have to wait.

Not wanting to waste the day, my husband roped in his Dad into helping him take down a large branch that overhung the lawn, blocking out quite a lot of sunlight. Taking down the branch took less time then we thought… although it did almost hit my Father In Law on the way down!
I’ve added a short video below.
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We now have a very large branch in the garden and we’re not really sure what to do with it. Ideally I’d like to display it in the garden somewhere, but at it’s current size, its too big to do anything with. We’ve cut a large number of the branches into small logs to display in the fireplace. The next job is to clean the moss off and then dry them out.
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Happy Easter everyone!